Start dependencies together

Bring a managed service’s entire depends_on graph back up in order, waiting for each declared condition, the moment a request arrives.

# compose.yml
services:
  sablier:
    image: sablierapp/sablier:1.15.0
    command:
      - start
      - --provider.name=docker
      - --provider.docker.honor-restart-policy=true
      - --sessions.default-duration=2m
      - --strategy.blocking.default-timeout=2m
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock

  app:
    image: sablierapp/mimic:v0.3.3
    labels:
      - "sablier.enable=true"
      - "sablier.group=app"
    depends_on:
      db:
        condition: service_healthy
      migration:
        condition: service_completed_successfully

  db:
    image: sablierapp/mimic:v0.3.3
    labels:
      - "sablier.enable=true"
      - "sablier.group=app"

  migration:
    image: sablierapp/mimic:v0.3.3
    restart: "no"

When a blocking request for the app group arrives, Sablier starts db and waits until it is healthy, starts migration and waits until it has completed, then starts app. Here db is labelled so it scales to zero with the group; migration is left unlabeled because it is a one-shot job.

    sequenceDiagram
    participant Client
    participant Sablier
    participant db
    participant migration
    participant app
    Client->>Sablier: blocking request for group app
    Sablier->>db: start
    db-->>Sablier: service_healthy
    Sablier->>migration: start
    migration-->>Sablier: service_completed_successfully
    Sablier->>app: start
    app-->>Client: ready
  

Many applications cannot start in isolation. A web app often needs its database to be healthy and a schema migration to have completed before it can serve traffic. When Sablier scales such an app to zero, it must bring the whole dependency graph back up, in the right order, the moment a request arrives.

The Docker provider does this by reading each container’s Compose depends_on relationships (Compose records them in the com.docker.compose.depends_on label) and starting every dependency, recursively, before the container that needs it, waiting for each declared condition to be satisfied.

When to use it

Use this when a managed service has dependencies that must be up and ready before it starts, such as a database (service_healthy) or a one-shot migration job (service_completed_successfully).

Do I need to label dependencies?

• Starting a depends_on dependency does not require any Sablier labels. As long as a labelled container declares the dependency, Sablier starts it and waits for its condition.
• Stopping only happens for containers explicitly labelled sablier.enable=true and belonging to the group. Label a dependency (for example a database) if you want it scaled to zero with the group; leave it unlabeled if it should keep running.
• Never put a one-shot container (a migration or init job that exits by design) into a blocking group. The blocking strategy waits for every group member to be running, so an exited container would keep the group from ever becoming ready. Leave it unlabeled and let depends_on trigger it.

A one-shot dependency resolving service_completed_successfully relies on the exited container being reported as completed. See Honor the restart policy.

See the runnable example.