Network & Aliases

The primary purpose of the network overlay is simple; it joins all of the different compose projects in a workspace to the same network so they can access eachother. This makes use of the network configuration in docker compose files. The network overlay is enabled in the orca.workspace.yaml configuration, by adding a section like below.

overlays:
  network:
    enabled: true
    createIn: {my-project}
    disableAliases: false
    pattern: "{{ .Service }}.{{ .Project }}.{{ .Workspace }}.local"

Property	Affect	Possible Values	Default
`enabled`	Turns on the network overlay	`bool(true\|false)`	`false`
`createIn`	The name of a project also defined within the workspace configuration, in which to create the network. The network will be defined in this project, and each other project will reference it as an "external" network.	`string`	`nil` (will cause an error)
`disableAliases`	Prevents the creation of extra aliases on the container. By default the network overlay will generate an alias for each container following the format `service.project.workspace.local` so that there is a clear and predictable DNS name that can be used from any service to access any other.	`bool(true\|false)`	`false`
`pattern`	A go template that defines the url that should be used. The go template will receive 3 variables `Service`, `Project`, `Workspace`, which are the names of the service in docker compose, the project name, and workspace name respectively. This can be used to customise the actual URL.	`string`	`{{ .Service }}.{{ .Project }}.{{ .Workspace }}.local`

The aliases overlay is included as a sub-feature in the network overlay, as they are very tightly linked; without knowing the network we don't know where to create the aliases. This is enabled by default but can be disabled with the disableAliases property shown above.