How does container selection and filtering work?

[sfkpmr]

The Arguments page in the docs says you can restrict watchtower to monitoring a subset of the running containers by specifying the container names as arguments when launching watchtower.

But on the Container selection page it says If you need to exclude some containers, set the com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable label to false.

Is setting this to false necessary if you specify the containers you want to update when launching?

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[opelx]

Hi, I like t make a crosslink to closed issue label com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=false is ignored #225 which comes in this context relevant to me and maybe you.

[victorcmoura]

Container selection occurs by filtering running containers. On startup, this filter is built based on the passed arguments:

watchtower/pkg/filters/filters.go

Line 55 in 3e069a7

func BuildFilter(names []string, enableLabel bool) t.Filter {

Currently, to build a container filter, the following local filters are set as a kind of pipeline:

1. Filter by name (returns true for all containers that are on the names list if it is set)
2. Filter by enabled label (returns true for all containers with the label com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=true if --label-enable is used)
3. Filter by disabled label (returns false for all containers with the label com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=false, regardless of any argument)

At runtime, every container that returns false for any one of these filters will not be monitored. So, if you don't include a container's name on the list (considering that there is a list), it should be ignored as it won't return true for this criteria.

Is setting this to false necessary if you specify the containers you want to update when launching?

No, it doesn't seem necessary.