How to build a Dioxus project with Docker?

[callmeitachi]

Recently I tried building a project with Dioxus, but the Docker build kept failing. Is there a way to integrate all the necessary tools for Dioxus building into a single image to avoid downloading tools from scratch every time?

[apoorva-01]

The fix is to stop reinstalling the toolchain and recompiling every dependency on each build. Two pieces do most of the work: cargo-chef so the dependency layer only rebuilds when your Cargo.toml/lockfile changes, and cargo binstall so dx comes down as a prebuilt binary instead of compiling from source (that compile alone is a big chunk of build time).

Dioxus keeps a reference Dockerfile that does exactly this. Easiest to just base yours on it:
https://github.com/DioxusLabs/playground/blob/main/Dockerfile

The shape of it:

• base: rust:1-bookworm, install cargo-binstall, then cargo binstall cargo-chef and cargo binstall dioxus-cli --root /.cargo
• planner: cargo chef prepare --recipe-path recipe.json
• builder: cargo chef cook --release --recipe-path recipe.json first (this is the layer that gets cached), then copy your source and run your actual build
• runtime: slim base like rust:1-slim-bookworm, copy over just the built binary + assets + the dx binary

The cook step is the whole point. As long as your deps don't change, Docker reuses that cached layer and skips recompiling the entire dependency tree, which is almost certainly what was eating your builds. binstall handles the other slow part (building the CLI itself).

If it's actually failing rather than just slow, drop the error in here. "Kept failing" is usually a missing system lib (openssl/pkg-config) or the wasm target not being installed, both quick fixes.