Don't download excluded container images

[wyozi]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

I'm running supabase start with the --exclude-containers flag in CI. Excluding containers is nice, but I'd also like to be able to skip downloading container images that will not be used at all.

Describe the solution you'd like

Excluded containers would not only skip running them, but also downloading them.

[sweatybridge]

Which container do you think is unused? The database depends on service migrations from auth, storage, and realtime. So running supabase db start alone will require pulling 3 additional service images.

[wyozi]

@sweatybridge that's a good point. I don't know how supabase internals work w.r.t. dependencies.

I'm running CI with --exclude realtime,storage-api,imgproxy,inbucket,edge-runtime with the goal of running minimal possible supabase instance that supports postgres + postgrest + auth (so probably more could be added).

[sweatybridge]

To close this one off, you can now selectively disable services in supabase/config.toml to skip initialising those schemas on supabase start. This also means that images for disabled services won't be downloaded.

You don't need to specify --exclude flag anymore on npx supabase@beta start. Stable release will be updated next Tuesday.

[mstibbard]

Thank you for the update @sweatybridge. That is helpful (disabling a few services in config.toml has shaved ~30s from my CI runs!) but doesn't complete the issue imo.

It would be more flexible and intuitive to prevent container downloads (in addition to not running them) when the exclude flag is provided to supabase start.

A trivial example: Inbucket is very useful for local dev but often unused in CI. Assume the CI has a step to run supabase start -x inbucket. With the current implementation you have to choose between:

1. version controlling config to represent local dev; resulting in CI downloading the inbucket container but not starting it
2. version controlling config to represent CI; resulting in manual changes to config.toml by each dev when working locally

[sweatybridge]

It would be more flexible and intuitive to prevent container downloads (in addition to not running them) when the exclude flag is provided to supabase start.

I think that's the current behaviour as well. For eg. if you enable inbucket in config.toml but disable it on CI with -x inbucket, the container image should not be downloaded.

But let me know if otherwise.

[mstibbard]

I re-enabled realtime and storage-api in my config (two of the services disabled to get the previously mentioned improvements) and re-ran the CI pipeline with supabase start -x realtime,storage-api. GitHub Actions logs shows it is still pulling the containers. Using Supabase CLI 1.187.10

v2.29.15: Pulling from supabase/realtime
...
Status: Downloaded newer image for public.ecr.aws/supabase/realtime:v2.29.15
v1.0.6: Pulling from supabase/storage-api
...
Status: Downloaded newer image for public.ecr.aws/supabase/storage-api:v1.0.6

[uncvrd]

Just wanted to report that some of the containers were excluded during the build phase but not all the ones I wanted excluded (like storage api)

Run supabase start --workdir ./turborepo/packages/supabase -x storage-api,imgproxy,studio,edge-runtime,logflare,vector
  supabase start --workdir ./turborepo/packages/supabase -x storage-api,imgproxy,studio,edge-runtime,logflare,vector
  shell: /usr/bin/bash -e {0}
  
Using workdir ./turborepo/packages/supabase
Starting database...
15.1.1.78: Pulling from supabase/postgres
9ea8908f4765: Pulling fs layer
[3](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:3)4942d66f6d0: Pulling fs layer
8fe03c8cf677: Pulling fs layer
76955[4](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:4)8ee90d: Pulling fs layer
8ace2fba2c0e: Pulling fs layer
afcea6ae84d0: Pulling fs layer
3362200394[5](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:5)1: Pulling fs layer
3d2e70a331b0: Pulling fs layer
553f2ee901[6](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:6)9: Pulling fs layer
db193fada6d[7](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:7): Pulling fs layer
bbb6bdacb9f4: Pulling fs layer
eb[8](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:8)e3a62ebc3: Pulling fs layer
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1cf0d307bd7[9](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:9): Pulling fs layer
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db193fada6d7: Waiting
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Digest: sha256:881ac26a02870c6784d9fbec67a6a9c5026905216bbd7dfbfa289ecc48073387
Status: Downloaded newer image for ghcr.io/supabase/postgres:15.1.1.78
Setting up initial schema...
v2.30.34: Pulling from supabase/realtime
09f376ebb190: Pulling fs layer
68b794319434: Pulling fs layer
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Digest: sha256:f43c080c74915340687727a34b21ae9cacc5ac21380d05b61efebeca6fd7ca4f
Status: Downloaded newer image for ghcr.io/supabase/realtime:v2.30.34
v1.11.13: Pulling from supabase/storage-api
43c4264eed91: Already exists
65e1b46b2b03: Pulling fs layer
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Digest: sha256:1e85dad48e8b3e85890a555e5114dc7ee48c2e8be4cfd97dd4e3564b4f[10](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:10)4fcd
Status: Downloaded newer image for ghcr.io/supabase/storage-api:v1.[11](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:11).13
v2.158.1: Pulling from supabase/gotrue
c6a83fedfae6: Pulling fs layer
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d0a2358fff01: Waiting
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Digest: sha256:202c16530f2f29c886de963ab18b369074c49655480a463ce881169019f2bda7
Status: Downloaded newer image for ghcr.io/supabase/gotrue:v2.158.1
Seeding globals from roles.sql...
Applying migration 202402210[12](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:12)244_init.sql...
...
Seeding data from supabase/seed.sql...
Starting containers...
2.8.1: Pulling from supabase/kong
213ec9aee27d: Pulling fs layer
a70653f7a2d5: Pulling fs layer
531e3bd93090: Pulling fs layer
8[14](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:14)dd06d26c7: Pulling fs layer
814dd06d26c7: Waiting
a70653f7a2d5: Verifying Checksum
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Digest: sha256:1b53405d8680a09d6f44494b7990bf7da2ea43f84a258c59717d4539abf09f6d
Status: Downloaded newer image for ghcr.io/supabase/kong:2.8.1
3.0.3: Pulling from supabase/inbucket
530afca65e2e: Pulling fs layer
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Digest: sha256:dc912ab76de647ca2a363fe2855[15](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:15)e512e964cf699166773f3c2c73f5e7f71c0
Status: Downloaded newer image for ghcr.io/supabase/inbucket:3.0.3
v12.2.0: Pulling from supabase/postgrest
108bc7be5b68: Pulling fs layer
108bc7be5b68: Verifying Checksum
108bc7be5b68: Download complete
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Digest: sha256:2cf1efd2c9c2e7606610c113cc73e936d8ce9ba089271cb9cbf11aa564bc30c7
Status: Downloaded newer image for ghcr.io/supabase/postgrest:v12.2.0
v0.83.2: Pulling from supabase/postgres-meta
f11c1adaa26e: Pulling fs layer
a9776ac865ab: Pulling fs layer
b39915[17](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:17)f32a: Pulling fs layer
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Digest: sha256:0e8cf91a277aefb7f85e4ec01c3b0ae69882b351c7927e3e[21](https://github.com/foundrydev/foundry/actions/runs/11342441101/job/31542851043#step:14:22)ce59c151ae780c
Status: Downloaded newer image for ghcr.io/supabase/postgres-meta:v0.83.2
Waiting for health checks...

[sweatybridge]

The only way to exclude storage and realtime images from downloading is to disable those services in config.toml.

[storage]
enabled = false

[realtime]
enabled = false

[uncvrd]

Appreciate the quick response @sweatybridge , I guess the confusing bit is that the cli states it can be excluded?

supabase start --help
Start containers for Supabase local development

Usage:
  supabase start [flags]

Flags:
  -x, --exclude strings       Names of containers to not start. [gotrue,realtime,storage-api,imgproxy,kong,inbucket,postgrest,postgres-meta,studio,edge-runtime,logflare,vector,supavisor]

[sweatybridge]

The auth, storage, and realtime images are special because they contain schema migrations to initialize the database.

If you exclude any of them via -x flag, those containers will not be started, but we still need to download the images to migrate the local database. So the help text of the exclude flag is technically true, but I can see why it might be confusing from what you'd expect.

Disabling those services in config.toml is the only way to skip applying schema migrations from those services. Since their migrations are skipped, we don't need to download the docker images for those services.