Docker Deployment

How to deploy the CoW Protocol Watch Tower with Docker to run programmatic order monitoring in production.

Docker Deployment

Deploy the CoW Protocol Watch Tower using Docker.

Overview

The preferred method of deployment is using Docker. The watch-tower is available as a Docker image on GitHub Container Registry.

Available tags

The following Docker image tags are available:

• latest - the latest stable version of the watch-tower
• vX.Y.Z - specific version releases (e.g., v1.0.0)
• main - the latest version from the main branch
• pr-<PR_NUMBER> - the latest version from a specific pull request

Running with Docker

To run the latest version of the watch-tower using Docker:

docker run --rm -it \
  -v "$(pwd)/config.json.example:/config.json" \
  ghcr.io/cowprotocol/watch-tower:latest \
  run \
  --config-path /config.json

Command breakdown

• --rm - automatically remove the container when it exits
• -it - run in interactive mode with TTY
• -v - mount your local config file into the container
• run --config-path /config.json - command arguments passed to the watch-tower

Volume mounting

The watch-tower requires a configuration file to be mounted into the container. The Dockerfile defines a volume at /usr/src/app/database for persistent database storage.

To mount both config and database:

docker run --rm -it \
  -v "$(pwd)/config.json:/config.json" \
  -v "$(pwd)/database:/usr/src/app/database" \
  ghcr.io/cowprotocol/watch-tower:latest \
  run \
  --config-path /config.json

See the example config.json.example in the repository for a sample configuration file with network settings.

Building from source

To build the Docker image from source:

docker build -t watch-tower .

The build process will:

1. Use Node.js 22.2 Alpine as the base image
2. Install dependencies with yarn
3. Run linting and tests
4. Build the application
5. Set up the entrypoint at dist/src/index.js

The Docker build process includes running tests and linting. Ensure your code passes these checks before building.