Docker Compose

For quickest start up, set up Docker or Podman desktop with a machine with roughly the following resources (or more).

  • 8 CPUs

  • 100 GB disk

  • 10 GB RAM

  1. Clone the Augur repository https://github.com/chaoss/augur

  2. Create a .env file in the top level directory with the following fields (don’t remove any variable, keep placeholder values if you don’t need some of them):

AUGUR_DB=augur
AUGUR_DB_USER=augur
AUGUR_DB_PASSWORD=password_here

AUGUR_GITHUB_API_KEY=ghp_value_here
AUGUR_GITHUB_USERNAME=gh_username
AUGUR_GITLAB_API_KEY=placeholder
AUGUR_GITLAB_USERNAME=placeholder

  1. Build the container using one of the following commands:

docker compose up --build

or

podman compose up --build

And augur should be up and running! Over time, you may decide that you want to download and run newer releases of Augur. It is critical that your .env file remains configured to use the same database name and password; though you can change the password if you understand how to connect to a database running inside a Docker container on your computer.

Rebuilding Augur in Docker

We do not recommend running the augur database in a Docker container in production, though for light installations (~ < 2,000 repos) it is OK as long as you understand that your data exists inside of a Docker container, and you will need to back that up if you want to avoid data loss.

You can identify the physical location of your Docker database file system using these commands:

docker volume ls
docker volume inspect <volume_name>

For example:

➜  augur-demo git:(docker-docs-patch-12) ✗ docker volume inspect augur-demo_augurpostgres
[
    {
        "CreatedAt": "2025-06-25T16:19:20Z",
        "Driver": "local",
        "Labels": {
            "com.docker.compose.config-hash": "5aae21cec561d5da3e9a0b92ccab7470394b21cf473803bd85055c4589535355",
            "com.docker.compose.project": "augur-demo",
            "com.docker.compose.version": "2.37.1",
            "com.docker.compose.volume": "augurpostgres"
        },
        "Mountpoint": "/var/lib/docker/volumes/augur-demo_augurpostgres/_data",
        "Name": "augur-demo_augurpostgres",
        "Options": null,
        "Scope": "local"
    }
]

To rebuild a fresh Augur database in Docker, follow these steps:

  1. Stop the running containers (if any):

    docker compose down

  2. Remove the existing database volumes and containers to clear all data:

    docker system prune -af
docker volume prune -af

  3. Rebuild and start the containers:

    docker compose up --build