FAQ

Short answers, each with the page that says more.

Is doze for production?

No. doze is for your machine and for CI. It runs one copy of each service, with no replication or failover, settings chosen for quick starts, and it puts services to sleep when nobody uses them. The local AWS is for development too. In production, use managed databases and real AWS.

Which machines does it run on?

Macs with Apple Silicon, and Linux on x86-64 and arm64. There is no build for Intel Macs or for Windows. See Install the app and Linux.

Do I need Docker?

No. doze runs each engine as a native process from binaries it downloads and checks. A service that is only shipped as a container image can still run in a container, as your own service; see Your own services.

Can I use it in CI?

Yes. Wrap your test command, or bring the stack up once and run several steps against it:

doze run --env -- go test ./...

doze up --all
./integration-tests
doze down

Commit doze.lock, so CI downloads the same binaries you run. In CI you usually want names off (DOZE_ZONE=off) and services on 127.0.0.1 at their ports. See Teams and CI.

Will it fight with a Postgres or Redis I already have?

doze runs its own binaries and keeps its data under ~/.doze; it never touches a system install. The one thing two programs can share is a port. If something else holds the port a service wants, the app names the process and offers to stop it or to use another port. See Troubleshooting.

Why did my database go to sleep?

Nothing was connected to it for two minutes. Its data stays on disk, and the next connection wakes it. Set sleep on its block for a longer time or "never", or pin it for now. See Sleep and wake.

What is in doze.lock? Should I commit it?

Commit it. It pins the exact build of each engine version, the release of each module, and the checksum of anything a service downloads, so every teammate and CI run the same bytes. A doze: line at the top records the newest doze that wrote it. See Files and storage.

What is the difference between version = 18 and a module version?

version = 18 is the engine: the Postgres your app talks to. It is the only version you write. The module is the plugin that runs that engine; it has its own releases, which doze picks for you and pins in doze.lock.

Will a module update change things under me?

No. The lock wins, offline too. Pins move only when you run doze modules upgrade, and the new lock goes through review like any change. If your config needs a newer module (an engine version or an argument your pinned release does not know), the error says which command to run.

Where do modules come from?

From the doze registry only, signed with a key compiled into doze. Software that is not in the registry runs as your own service. To add a module to the registry, see Propose a module. How the signing works is in The trust model.

How do I share a setup with my team?

Commit doze.hcl and doze.lock. A teammate clones the repository and brings the stack up; they get the same engines, versions, databases, roles, buckets, queues and topics. Personal changes go in a gitignored override file; see Splitting files.

How is it different from docker-compose, Testcontainers or LocalStack?

• docker-compose runs every service in the file, all the time, inside a Linux VM on a Mac. doze runs native processes and starts each one when something connects.
• Testcontainers starts containers from inside each test run. doze keeps one declared stack that your editor, your tests and your teammates share; doze reset <name> gives a test run a clean database.
• LocalStack is a large set of AWS services in a Docker image. doze’s aws module is one native process with S3, SQS, SNS, DynamoDB, Lambda, EventBridge, KMS, SSM, Secrets Manager, STS and Step Functions. It does not cover everything LocalStack does; see doze AWS’s API support.

More in Alternatives.

Can I safely delete ~/.doze?

Yes, but it holds your local databases, so their data goes with it. Engines are downloaded again on next use, and your doze.hcl and doze.lock are not touched. To free space more carefully, see Files and storage.

How do I see what doze is doing?

The app: each stack’s page, a service’s page with why it is awake, and Activity, which shows the last hour, day or week from the stack’s journal. In a terminal: doze status (-w to keep it on screen), doze logs, and doze up -f to follow the logs as the stack comes up.

How do I uninstall doze?

Undo the machine setup, remove the app, then delete its folder:

doze trust --remove        # in each project that used domains
doze dns-setup --uninstall
brew uninstall --cask doze # or: sudo apt remove doze, sudo dnf remove doze
rm -rf ~/.doze

doze dns-setup --uninstall removes the resolver route, the network daemon and doze’s certificate authority. See Files and storage.