Batect in a nutshell

Batect is an alternative Docker Compose. For my own experience it is easier to use in terms of built-in features such as cross platform compatibility.

Unfortunately it is no longer maintained.

Its core is a yaml file that defines what containers to use and what tasks to execute. For example, I have one container called run-env and a task test-local which runs a line of command:

containers:
  run-env:
    build_directory: .
    volumes:
      - local: .
        container: /code
      - type: cache
        container: /code/node_modules
        name: node_modules
    working_directory: /workdir
tasks:
  test-local:
    description: Run Playwright e2e Tests
    run:
      container: run-env
      command: |
        npx playwright test
      environment:
        ENVIRONMENT: local

Quick command to run locally:
./batect test-local

Troubleshooting

Issue: permission denied: ./batect

Run
chmod +x ./batect


Issue: Checksum unmatched for the download behind firewall

When running './batect ' for the first time, batect will download jar from remote server.
Downloading Batect version 0.84.0 from https://updates.batect.dev/v1/files/0.84.0/batect-0.84.0.jar
To
/Users/{user}/.batect/cache/0.84.0/batect-0.84.0.jar

You might run into an issue:

The downloaded version of Batect does not have the expected checksum. Delete '/Users/{user}/.batect/cache/0.84.0/batect-0.84.0.jar' and then re-run this script to download it again.

In this case, the solution is to paste the url of jar into Chrome to download directly, and overwrite the local jar file.