In this article I will show you how you can quickly start latest development version of Papermerge using Portainer. Please keep in mind that latest development version of Papermerge is still an early alpha – which means that it is feature incomplete and very buggy – it is definitely not ready for production. Even though it is in alpha stage, you can already clearly see the direction towards which is it moving – like utilitarian part of dual panel mode, download document with OCR text layer and so on.
Step 1 – Update /etc/hosts File
First of all make sure you add papermerge.local entry to your /etc/hosts file. The point of this is that you will be able to access your Papermerge local instance by pointing your browser to http://papermege.local. Obviously you can use another url (e.g. papermerge.loca.dev), but for that you will need to update change little bit docker compose file (hint: in docker compose file search and replace string papermerge.local with papermerge.loca.dev)
Step 2 – Add Stack
In Portainer click on ‘Stacks’ tab and then on ‘Add stack’ as illustrated in picture below:

Step 3 – Fill in repository details
Fill in Name field (e.g. papermerge), select git Repository
for Build method. Set following values for Repository URL and Compose path:
- Repository URL with
https://github.com/papermerge/papermerge-core
- Compose path:
docker/docker-compose.yml

Step 4 – Add environment variables
In environment variables section can either:
- insert variables one by one (simple mode)
- paste all variables as one single text file (advanced mode)
For this guide we use option 2. Paste following text in environment variables section:
APP_IMAGE=ghcr.io/papermerge/papermerge APP_TAG=2.1.0-alpha-latest PAPERMERGE_JS_IMAGE=ghcr.io/papermerge/papermerge.js PAPERMERGE_JS_TAG=2.1.0-alpha-latest DB_USER=postgres DB_NAME=postgres DB_PASSWORD=postgres DB_HOST=db DB_PORT=5432 REDIS_HOST=redis REDIS_PORT=6379 ES_HOSTS=es ES_PORT=9200 SECRET_KEY=alsdkalsdjlaksdj90823423!KLKJLkjkjlkjlKLPOgrwqna SUPERUSER_USERNAME=admin SUPERUSER_EMAIL=admin@mail.com SUPERUSER_PASSWORD=admin

Step 5 – Deploy the stack
Click on ‘Deploy the stack’ button at the very bottom of the screen as illustrated in picture below:

Now you can see Papermerge stack in the list and if you click you will see all Papermerge services running:


Now you can access your Papermerge instance by opening your web browser and pointing it to address http://papermerge.local
:

This article is also available as video. In case you prefer video format over text – check following screencast: