Deploying Docker-Compose Projects with Nomad Using raw_exec

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TL;DR

You don’t need Nomad to parse your dockerr-compose.yml. Justgit cloneanddocker-compose up --buildviaraw_exec`. Done.

Context

I had a small project: a Go-based app that syncs data into Meilisearch. Locally, I used docker-compose to run two services:

• Meilisearch – the search engine
• searchsync – a Go app that reads JSON and pushes data to Meilisearch

Now I wanted to deploy this with Nomad.

The Problem

Nomad doesn’t natively support docker-compose. So I:

1. Tried converting the compose file to Nomad jobs
2. Got into volume mount hell
3. Fought with constraint errors
4. Tried building inside Docker
5. Realized I was wasting time

So I gave up on Docker driver and used Nomad’s raw_exec instead.

The Plan

Let the raw exec driver:

• Clone the repo
• Run docker-compose up --build

It just works.

Prerequisites

1. Docker Engine is installed on the target Nomad client node
2. Docker Compose plugin installed manually:

bash
mkdir -p ~/.docker/cli-plugins
curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.27.1/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 \
-o ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose
chmod +x ~/.docker/cli-plugins/docker-compose
docker compose version # ✅ should show v2.x


1. Your Nomad client has access to Git (via SSH key or HTTPS token)

Nomad Job File

Here's the final working deploy.hcl:

`hcl
job "searchsync-rawexec" {
datacenters = ["dc1"]
type = "batch"

group "searchsync" {
task "bootstrap-searchsync" {
driver = "raw_exec"

  config {
    command = "/bin/bash"
    args    = ["-c", <<EOT

cd /tmp && \
git clone [e-mail]:hexmos/commons/searchsync.git && \
cd searchsync && \
docker compose up --build
EOT
]
}

  constraint {
    attribute = "${node.unique.id}"
    value     = "a02c1701-53ae-1b96-5004-3d70c1227751"  # constraint to nats03 node
  }

  resources {
    cpu    = 500
    memory = 512
  }
}

}
}
`

Deploy It

bash
nomad job run deploy.hcl


Done. No image push. No registry creds. Just clone and run.

Bonus: CI/CD Step

Here's the GitLab CI step:

yaml
deploy-searchsync:
stage: deploy-searchsync
tags:
- gcp-master
script:
- export NOMAD_ADDR="http://127.0.0.1:4646"
- nomad job stop searchsync-rawexec || true
- nomad job run deploy.hcl


Conclusion

Don't overcomplicate things. If your app runs with docker-compose, justrun it that way using Nomad's raw_exec. Let it do one job: boot up your service.

No variable mess. No volume hell. No hours lost converting YAML to HCL.

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