hack.chat Docker container

This repository contains a docker compose setup that can serve the hack.chat project.

Deploying

# Clone the repository
$ git clone https://github.com/mikeevmm/hack-chat-docker hackchat
$ cd hackchat

# Configure port mapping and serve URL in docker-compose.yml
$ editor docker-compose.yml

# Build the container
# (Set CHANNELS='' for the default channels.)
$ ADMIN='admin_password' \
  CHANNELS='first,second,vip' \
  docker compose create chat

# Copy the frontend files
$ docker compose cp chat:/hackchat/client ./client

# Run the backend
$ docker compose up

# Host the frontend files (with Nginx or similar)

Hacks

Due to the nature of the source code, making it amenable to containerization has required some hacks. While these are not too hard to update, significant changes to the hack.chat repository may break the current approach.

Namely, the original repository runs an interactive configuration script right after npm install as a postinstall hook. Docker can't deal with this script correctly. The Dockerfile in this repository overwrites the corresponding configuration script (config.js) with a modified copy that doesn't require user input. If the original config.js is modified substantially, this overwriting may break the build process.

Furthermore, the provided client files hard-code the backend URL. This breaks whenever the host port differs from the (hard-coded) container port (6060). This is currently rectified with a sed as part of the build process, so that the serve URL can be set within the docker-compose.yml file. If the client.js file changes substantially, this hack can break.

Finally, the original hack.chat repository serves both its websocket backend and client files with pm2; however, it claims in its documentation that the file server should not be trusted for production deployment. Thus, the Dockerfile in this repository also overwrites the corresponding configuration file (pm2.config.cjs) so that only the websocket backend is served. If the original copy of this file changes substantially, Docker may fail to start the server, or it may not work correctly.

The Docker configuration given here works with hack.chat's commit 6915f8a.