Overview of the Nx Docker Plugin

The Nx Plugin for Docker contains executors and utilities for building and publishing docker images within an Nx workspace. Using the @nx/docker Inference Plugin, Nx will automatically detect Dockerfile's in your workspace and provide a docker:build and docker:run target for each. It will also provide a nx-release-publish target for publishing docker images to a registry.

Installation

In any Nx workspace, you can install @nx/docker by running the following command:

nx add @nx/docker

This will install the correct version of @nx/docker to match the version of Nx you are using.

Minimum Nx Version

The @nx/docker plugin only became available in Nx 21.4.0-beta.9. Your Nx Workspace will need to be on this version or higher to use it.

How @nx/docker Infers Tasks

The @nx/docker plugin will create a task for any project that has a Dockerfile present. It will infer the following tasks:

• docker:build
• docker:run
• nx-release-publish

View Inferred Tasks

To view inferred tasks for a project, open the project details view in Nx Console or run nx show project my-project in the command line.

@nx/docker Configuration

The @nx/docker plugin is configured in the plugins array in nx.json.

nx.json

{
  "plugins": [
    {
      "plugin": "@nx/docker",
      "options": {
        "buildTarget": "docker:build",
        "runTarget": "docker:run"
      }
    }
  ]
}

The buildTarget and runTarget options control the names of the inferred Docker tasks. The default names are docker:build and docker:run.

Using Nx Release to Publish Docker Images

The @nx/docker plugin provides a nx-release-publish target for publishing docker images to a registry. Nx Release was also updated to support versioning docker images, generating changelogs, and publishing docker images to a registry through a single command.

You can learn more about how to manage releases for Docker Images in the Release Docker Images guide.