Make sure you check out the pre-built docker images first if you just want to run Ampache:

https://github.com/ampache/ampache-docker

This setup is different: it is a live development environment. The whole repo is bind-mounted into the container, so you edit code on your host and refresh the browser to see the change — no rebuild required. A MariaDB service is included, so everything you need comes up with a single command.

From the repo root:

docker compose up --build

Then open http://localhost:8084

On the first run the container will:

1. create the public/.htaccess, public/play/.htaccess and public/rest/.htaccess files from their .dist templates,
2. run composer install / npm run build only if vendor/ or public/dist are missing (if you already built on the host they are reused),
3. wait for the database and auto-install Ampache, creating an admin account.

Default admin login (change it): admin / admin

To stop:

docker compose down          # keep the database
docker compose down -v       # also wipe the database volume (fresh install next time)

Everything is driven by environment variables with sensible defaults, so docker compose up works with no extra setup. To override, create a .env file in the repo root:

DB_NAME=ampache
DB_USER=root                 # admin creds used to create the schema
DB_PASSWORD=ampache
AMPACHE_DB_USER=ampache      # app creds written into config/ampache.cfg.php
AMPACHE_DB_PASSWORD=ampache
AMPACHE_ADMIN_USER=admin
AMPACHE_ADMIN_PASSWORD=admin
AMPACHE_ADMIN_EMAIL=admin@example.com

Set DB_NAME= (empty) in your .env to skip the automatic install. Ampache will then send you to the web installer at http://localhost:8084; use these values when it asks:

• Database Host: db
• Database Port: 3306
• Username / Password (admin, to create the DB): root / ampache
• Ampache Database User / Password: ampache / ampache

• Put media under docker/media/ on the host — it appears at /media in the container. When adding a catalog in Ampache, set the path to /media.
• Apache/Ampache logs are written to docker/log/ on the host.

• The database runs as a separate service, not inside the Ampache container, so the container image no longer bundles mariadb-server.
• composer is available inside the container (docker compose exec ampache composer ...) and dev-tuned PHP settings live in docker/data/php/99-ampache-dev.ini.