Volume permissions across multiple operating systems

General
1

Hi all,

I have created a local docker development environment of a WordPress instance.

This consists of a git repository docker, the root of which contains a docker-compose file, then a folder called data in which I’ve created folders called plugins, themes and uploads.

├── data
│   ├── index.php
│   ├── plugins
│   ├── themes
│   └── uploads
├── docker-compose.yml
├── files
│   ├── mysqldump.cnf
│   └── uploads.ini
└── README.md

The docker-compose.yml file simply runs a database image and the official wordpress image from the Docker hub.

version: '3.1'

services:

  db:
    container_name: website-mysql
    image: mysql:5.7
    restart: always
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: db
      MYSQL_USER: user
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: pass
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: rootpass
    volumes:
      - ./migrations:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d
      - ./files/mysqldump.cnf:/etc/mysql/conf.d/mysqldump.cnf

  wordpress:
    container_name: website-wordpress
    image: wordpress
    depends_on:
      - db
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 7070:80
    environment:
      WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: db
      WORDPRESS_DB_USER: user
      WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: pass
      WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: db            
      WORDPRESS_DEBUG: 1
    entrypoint: /startup.sh
    volumes:
      - ./files/startup.sh:/startup.sh
      - ./data:/var/www/html/wp-content
      - ./files/uploads.ini:/usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/uploads.ini

volumes:
  wordpress:
  db:

The important part here is the line - ./data:/var/www/html/wp-content where I mount the data directory to the WordPress wp-content folder so that WordPress recognises the files in my data/plugins directory (for example) as plugins on the WordPress instance.

This works fine.

The difficulty I’m having is dealing with permissions across different operating systems. I have 1 user with Linux/Debian, 1 user with MacOS and 1 user with Windows 10 all trying to access this development environment.

I want them to be able to clone this repository, spin up the WordPress instance and install/update plugins as needed, before committing their changes back to the repository.

This doesn’t work smoothly however. It works reasonably well on MacOS, but on Linux there are some files natively owned by www-data and some by root. Even when I chown -R these files to root, and set (what I think are) the right perms using chmod (0755 folders, 0644 files), WordPress is unable to install plugins because it can’t create a new folder in the wp-content folder (e.g. wp-content/uploads/03/ can’t be created, but /02/ exists).

I haven’t even tested Windows yet, but I suspect we’ll have a similar problem - probably manifesting in a different error.

Is there a way I can make these volumes permissible across operating systems, in such a way that WordPress can do everything it needs to do - e.g. creating new files and folders in subdirectories of wp-content?