how to run cli command from container_1 onto in container_2 in a docker-compose setup [duplicate]

Question

I have Elixir/Phoenix server, based on user requirements server generates markdown and latex files, then it runs System.cmd("pandoc", [relevant commands]) to generate PDF files everything works fine in the local system, here the dependencies are (pandoc and latex) installed locally

now I'm trying to dockerize the project. I tried installing pandoc and latex in phoenix_server container and it worked fine but the final docker image size increased to 8.5GB because texlive itself has 7.5GB so its not an option

I found this pandoc/latex:2.18 image

so my idea is to create 3 docker containers and run docker-compose up

container_1: Phoenix_server
container_2: postgres:14
container_3: pandoc/latex:2.18

but it didn't worked.

challenges:

1 sharing server generated file's with pandoc/latex container, for this I'm thinking to using docker volume option

2 I could not figure out how to run cli commands from phoenix container onto in pandoc/latex container

any help is greatly appreciated

Thank you

Answer 1

1. To be fair, if you're not using distributed erlang in this case, I would just install Elixir to the pandoc image and left postgres as an external container / managed db as you did.

2. When you want to distribute calculations like you are trying with containers, I would probably put some queue (postgres + Oban as a option looks good here) and started elixir process in the pandoc image which can do the rendering and save outputs to the shared volume.