where to put plugins when using docker image

[BigMichi1]

hello,

currently i'm running ArchiSteamFarm as a docker image inside my docker-compose configuration

  archisteamfarm:
    image: justarchi/archisteamfarm
    restart: always
    hostname: asf
    environment:
      - TZ=${TZ}
    ports:
      - 127.0.0.1:1242:1242
    volumes:
      - asf-vol-1:/app/config

how can I now install a plugin?
the only way I could figure out is downloading and putting the directory inside the plugin folder when running the commands from inside the running container. as I have seen there is already a plugin installed so probably adding a new volume for the plugin directory is not a good idea. is there any other place where plugins can be stored so that folders do not overlap?

[JustArchi]

There are two ways, one would be the one I recommend, and one will be alternative that also works but is much more complicated:

Recommended way:
Create a directory for each of the custom plugins you have, majority of custom plugins already come with such directory, for others you can just create a folder and put dll (and other files, if any) inside. Then mount /path/to/your/customplugin into /app/plugins/customplugin. As long as customplugin doesn't clash with any of the plugins ASF comes with, ASF will be able to discover both official plugins as well as your custom plugin during runtime. And since ASF also loads plugins deeper, you can simply have /path/to/your/plugins inside which there will be standalone folders, and you can mount it under /app/plugins/custom (or any other name that doesn't clash with ASF plugins in /app/plugins).

Alternative way (overcomplicated, but will also work):
ASF supports running from custom path, you can read more about it in command-line arguments wiki section. It's possible for you to create a custom structure with config and plugins on your machine, such as /path/to/base/config and /path/to/base/plugins, and then mount /path/to/base in custom location, such as /asf inside the container. Then you can instruct ASF to use that as the custom path by declaring ASF_PATH=/asf environment variable (or --path /asf directly to the process). This will cause ASF to load both official plugins, as well as ones in your custom location. Please note that if you decide to use this approach, /app/config is not read anymore, so there is no point in overriding it either. I recommend you to read wiki about --path if you decide to use it.

It's up to you which way you prefer, I'd personally go with first option but if you don't want to mount every single plugin directory (for example you're making deterministic docker recipe that doesn't know directories in advance), second one is preferred.

[JustArchi]

And of course there are also other ways to do it such as copying files directly into /app/plugins directory after creating the Docker container and so on, but those are not recommended by me as they're inferior to two above.

[BigMichi1]

Thanks for the explanations. It should have come to my mind to mount each plugin directory separately. somehow my thinking stopped at the point to mount only the plugins directory

[Abrynos]

There is also the possibility if creating a custom docker image.