Container Labels

Hoister reads Docker labels off your containers to decide which ones to manage and how to treat each. Labels are the per-container half of Hoister’s configuration; agent-wide behaviour lives in the TOML file and environment variables.

hoister.enable

labels:
  - "hoister.enable=true"

Opt a container in to automatic updates. Only containers with hoister.enable=true are checked for new images and updated/rolled back. Containers without it are left alone by the updater.

hoister.hide

labels:
  - "hoister.hide=true"

Exclude a container from reporting to the controller — its state, logs, and metrics are not sent and it won’t appear in the dashboard. Use it for sidecars or noisy helpers you don’t want to see. (By default the agent reports on every container in its Compose project, whether or not hoister.enable is set.)

hoister.identifier

labels:
  - "hoister.identifier=my-service"

Override the service name Hoister uses to identify the container in deployments, metrics, and the dashboard. When unset, Hoister falls back to the Docker Compose service name, and finally to the container name.

hoister.backup-volumes

labels:
  - "hoister.backup-volumes=true"

Back up the container’s named volumes before applying an update. If the update fails its health check and Hoister rolls back, the volumes are restored from the backup. Bind mounts are not affected. See the Getting Started guide.

Example

docker-compose.yml

services:
  app:
    image: ghcr.io/acme/app:latest
    volumes:
      - app-data:/var/lib/app
    labels:
      - "hoister.enable=true"
      - "hoister.backup-volumes=true"
      - "hoister.identifier=acme-app"

  metrics-sidecar:
    image: prom/node-exporter:latest
    labels:
      - "hoister.hide=true"   # don't report this one to the dashboard

volumes:
  app-data: