# Using Git with Docker

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-git-with-docker/114227>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [February 27, 2026, 1:59pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-git-with-docker/114227 "2026-02-27T13:59:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Noah\_Burnette](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/noah_burnette/32/83777_2.png) [@Noah\_Burnette](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/Noah_Burnette)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2026, 3:56pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/using-git-with-docker/114227/4 "2026-02-27T15:56:59Z")

</div>

Hi Brian,

Are you using 8.1 or 8.3?

For 8.1, there are some significant steps I had to take to be able to version ignition reliably. I would recommend using a docker compose with volume mounts to point your `data/projects` to a directory in the git repo like `your-repo/ignition`. That will get you 80% there. It will version all of your views, scripts and other plain text files related to your projects. The last 20% is the hard part. I personally use the [tag cicd module](https://github.com/design-group/ignition-tag-cicd-module) to store the UDTs in `data/projects/.tags`. For the gateway specific configurations, I have a directory inside `data/projects/.config` where I store my application configuration and the gateway backup artifact. To generate a gateway artifact that doesn't have the projects or UDTs (since we are already versioning those items), you have to build a custom `dockerfile` that has `sqlite` and `zip` installed. Note that I remove everything from `TAGCONFIG` because I build my tags from an application configuration. This script has to be triggered from **inside** the container and obviously gateway scoped. As noted in the script I query the audit table to get what changed and generate a commit message and a script that just pushes the artifact with the generated commit message. You would need to adapt this to your needs.

Example below:

> **script example**
>
> ```python
> environmentType = "dev"
> gatewayName = "some-gateway"
> commitMessage = "I usually build a commit message from ignitions audit table. to get some idea of the changes."
> system.util.execute(["/usr/local/bin/ignition/data/projects/.config/scripts/make-backup.sh", environmentType, gatewayName, commitMessage])
> 
> ```

> **ignition/.config/scripts/make-backup.sh**
>
> ```bash
> #!/bin/bash
> 
> # Allows us to see output even when called from ignition
> exec > /usr/local/bin/ignition/data/projects/.config/scripts/backup.log 2>&1
> set -euox 
> ENVIRONMENT_TYPE="$1"
> GATEWAY_NAME="$2"
> COMMIT_MSG="$3"
> 
> BACKUP_DIR="/usr/local/bin/ignition/data/projects/.config/${ENVIRONMENT_TYPE}/${GATEWAY_NAME}"
> 
> echo $(date)
> 
> /usr/local/bin/ignition/gwcmd.sh -b /usr/local/bin/ignition/data/projects/.config/scripts/backup.gwbk -y
> 
> cd /usr/local/bin/ignition/data/projects/.config/scripts
> 
> mv backup.gwbk backup.zip
> 
> zip --delete backup.zip projects/* modules/com.inductiveautomation.perspective/*
> 
> unzip backup.zip db_backup_sqlite.idb
> 
> sqlite3 db_backup_sqlite.idb < remove-tags.sql
> 
> zip backup.zip db_backup_sqlite.idb
> 
> rm db_backup_sqlite.idb
> 
> # Create the destination directory if it doesn't exist
> mkdir -p "$BACKUP_DIR"
> 
> # Move and rename the final backup
> mv backup.zip "${BACKUP_DIR}/backup.gwbk"
> 
> printf '%s\n' "$COMMIT_MSG" > "${BACKUP_DIR}/commit.txt"
> 
> ```

> **ignition/.config/scripts/remove-tags.sql**
>
> ```sql
> delete from TAGCONFIG;
> 
> ```

> **dockerfile**
>
> ```python
> FROM inductiveautomation/ignition:8.1.42
> 
> USER root
> 
> RUN apt-get update && apt-get install sqlite3 -y && apt-get install unzip -y && apt-get install zip -y
> 
> COPY modules/*.modl /usr/local/bin/ignition/user-lib/modules/
> 
> COPY jars/*.jar /usr/local/bin/ignition/lib/core/common/
> 
> ```

More than happy to go into detail about this if you are curious.

For 8.3, [this guide](https://www.docs.inductiveautomation.com/docs/8.3/tutorials/version-control-guide) will help. I put the plain text config in `data/projects/.config/ignition` but you could make a separate volume mount for this. Be sure to follow the guide's `.gitignore`. I dont have to generate backup artifacts in a hacky way or use external modules. It actually works pretty nice now.

Hope this helps!

---

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