Create image with empty database

[quanterion]

I'm using docker-compose for testing with one of containers is postgres. Each time I start compose it takes postgres image and spends some to create container out of it because it runs docker-entrypoint.sh.

So I want to speed it up and create Docker image with empty seed database:

FROM postgres:10.1

ENV POSTGRES_PASSWORD mypassword
ENV POSTGRES_DB shell

RUN docker-entrypoint.sh postgres

ENTRYPOINT ["echo DB shell started"]
However it doesn't work because command RUN docker-entrypoint.sh postgres never exits. How to do it the right way?

[tianon]

When you RUN docker-entrypoint.sh postgres, you're literally starting up the PostgreSQL server, which expects to run indefinitely.

As to what you're trying to accomplish, see #375 and #319 (comment). You'll need to set PGDATA, and likely run initdb yourself (because docker-entrypoint.sh's initialization code is tailored for starting up a persistent instance of PostgreSQL, as you've discovered).

In the future, these sorts of questions/requests would be more appropriately posted to the Docker Community Forums, the Docker Community Slack, or Stack Overflow.