portler volumes

Manage this project's Portler-managed Docker volumes. See the Volumes guide for concepts and the worktree workflow.

portler volumes [list] [--prod]
portler volumes fork <volume> <new-set> [--prod]
portler volumes remove <volume> [--force] [--prod]

All volume commands need the Docker daemon; when it is not running they fail with a clear error. With --prod they work on the production volumes of a project that sets name: (portler-<name>--<volume>, listed by their owner label); see Stable identity on a server.

volumes / volumes list

Lists this project's volumes with their volume set, declaring services, size, and the containers using them.

volumes fork <volume> <new-set>

Clones a volume's data into a <volume>--<new-set> variant:

portler volumes fork postgres-data migration

• The copy runs cp -a inside a throwaway alpine:3 container; the original is untouched.
• <volume> can be the short name from portler.yml (postgres-data), a name--set variant (postgres-data--migration), or the full Docker volume name.
• Set names may contain a-z0-9_.- but not --.
• The target must not exist yet. If two forks into the same target race, only the one that created it copies; the other fails with "another fork created target volume … at the same time" rather than mixing two datasets.

Run the stack against the fork with portler up --volume-set migration. A fork made with --prod (or --file) lives in that scope, so run up with the same flags: portler up --prod --volume-set migration. Without them up would mount the development variant instead. The command Portler prints after the fork already includes them.

volumes remove <volume> [--force]

Removes a project volume. This destroys its data for good, so Portler refuses when:

• a running container mounts the volume, or
• the volume is not labelled portler.project=<project>, meaning Portler cannot confirm it created it.

--force overrides only the in-use protection; ownership is never bypassed. An older Portler may have let docker run -v create a legitimately expected but unlabelled volume. Portler will not delete that legacy volume: inspect it explicitly with docker volume inspect <name>, confirm its data is disposable, then remove it manually with docker volume rm <name>.