Docker is used to run each component of the project in separate containers. You can install it here. Once installed, run the newly installed Docker engine.

To build the containers for the project, run $ docker-compose build. This step is only necessary when the infrastructure changes (including adding new Python/NodeJS requirements).

Now, you can run $ docker-compose up to run the project (which is accessible by default at https://localhost:8000). In case any migrations were made to the database schema (i.e. if you receive a message of the form You have {n} unapplied migration(s). when running $ docker-compose up), run $ docker-compose exec web python manage.py migrate.

Any changes in the local directory will be synced automatically to the container. To run a command on the web container, which is where the Django project runs, run $ docker-compose exec web {command}. For example, to run Django's migrations: $ docker-compose exec web python manage.py migrate.

$ docker-compose run {container} {command} should be used if you want to run a command on a container service without having such a container running. However, note that it will cause a new container to be spawned, which means that using run repeatedly will slow down Docker after a while. To alleviate this, you can stop containers using $ docker stop {container_id}$ where the container_id can be found using $ docker-compose ps.

On the other hand, $ docker-compose exec {container} {command} executes a command on the running instances of the container. This prevents a new container from spawning, so Docker will not slow down overtime. However, you need to have a container running. In addition, these changes will not persist when spawning a new container.