Ghost will not read custom theme in `content/themes`.

[broccolihighkicks]

docker run \
--platform=linux/arm64 \
--name ghost-01 \
-e NODE_ENV=development \
-p 127.0.0.1:2368:2368 \
-v "$(pwd)/vol/content:/var/lib/ghost/content" \
-v "$(pwd)/vol/config.development.json:/var/lib/ghost/config.development.json" \
-e server__host=0.0.0.0 \
ghost:5.116.2

I am using this to run a Ghost instance, and inside $(pwd)/vol/content/themes/starter on my macOS host I have the starter theme:

https://github.com/TryGhost/Starter

It is checked out from that git repo, npm installed, and npm run build has been run.

I restart the container, and the theme files are in the folder and readable from the container.

But the Ghost UI (Settings -> Themes -> Installed) does not show it.

I have also tried changing all the permissions of the files to chmod 777 and also changed them to be owned by node.

Is this the correct way to enable a custom theme with the docker container?

[tianon]

I have to admit that my experience with Themes in Ghost is extremely limited -- from https://ghost.org/help/installing-a-theme/#installing-a-theme-manually, it seems possible that Ghost does not auto-discover themes in that directory and that more is required for it to pick them up, but perhaps that's inaccurate and something else is happening here? 🤔

[tianon]

Ok, it took a lot of tries, and I got lost in some Ghost-specific details along the way, but the end result was success.

I'm running https://github.com/tianon/rawdns locally (which is why I'm using url=http://ghost.docker:2368), I don't have a mail server (hence mail__transport=stub), and I don't want to set up a separate database just for testing (hence database__ stuff):

$ # I start with `bash` instead of letting Ghost start since we need to restart Ghost after installing a theme and that was easier for me than doing this correctly with a volume, etc
$ docker run -it --rm --name ghost --pull=always --env database__client=sqlite3 --env database__connection__filename=content/data/ghost-non-production.db --env database__useNullAsDefault=true --env url=http://ghost.docker:2368 --env NODE_ENV=development --env mail__transport=stub ghost bash
root@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost# # I started with "apt-get update" and "apt-get install git" so I can just "git clone" the theme later
root@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost# apt-get update
root@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost# apt-get install git
root@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost# # switch to the "node" user -- I should've used "--user node" instead but this is easy enough
root@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost# gosu node bash
node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost$ # initialize all the content directories
node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost$ docker-entrypoint.sh node current/index.js
...
Ctrl+C
node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost$ git clone https://github.com/TryGhost/Starter.git content/themes/starter
node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost$ cd content/themes/starter/
node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost/content/themes/starter$ npm install
...
added 435 packages, and audited 436 packages in 4s
...
node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost/content/themes/starter$ cd /var/lib/ghost/
node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost$ docker-entrypoint.sh node current/index.js
...

Now I was able to go in my browser to http://ghost.docker:2368/ghost/#/settings/design/change-theme and after setting things up I was able to successfully swap to my "Starter" theme.