An example of decoupled nginx deployment with the use of rocker-compose. See http://tech.grammarly.com/blog/posts/How-We-Deploy-Containers-at-Grammarly.html

nginx.yml

namespace: nginx
containers:

  # "shared" is the data volume container that holds nginx config files and static html files for
  # the "nginx" container. It is empty from the beginning, but once "configs" container is started
  # files are copied to the "shared" container with rsync(1)
  # 
  # This container is designed to be persistent across deploys of both "nginx" and "configs"
  # containers.
  # 
  # Also, the reason why we need a separate container for holding configs instead of having
  # configs[volumes_from:nginx] is that when nginx is updated we want configs to be
  # instantly available. Having configs stored in the volume of "nginx" container will not work.
  # 
  # It is based on the `grammarly/scratch` image that is basically an empty image suitable for
  # data volume containers.
  shared:
    image: grammarly/scratch:latest
    state: created
    volumes:
      - /etc/nginx/conf.d
      - /usr/share/nginx/html

  # Nginx container. It reads configuration and static html files from the "shared" data volume container.
  # On startup, it waits for "configs" container to exit because we want nginx to start *after*
  # the config files are copied to the "shared" container.
  nginx:
    image: nginx:1.9.3
    ports: 0.0.0.0:80:80
    volumes_from: shared
    wait_for: configs

  # "configs" container is the one we use to deliver configuration and static html files for the "nginx"
  # container. On every run, this container copies its files to the corresponding directories
  # (/etc/nginx/conf.d and /usr/share/nginx/html) in the "shared" data volume container.
  # 
  # Note that we use rsync(1) instead of cp(1) to manage deleted files as well.
  # 
  # Because of `state:ran`, rocker-compose will run the container only once and will not repeat
  # execution for subsequent deploys unless "my_nginx_configs" is updated.
  # 
  # When the new version of "my_nginx_configs" is available, `rocker-compose` will re-create the container
  # and will run it again.
  # 
  # Open ./configs/Rockerfile to see how "my_nginx_configs" image is built.
  configs:
    image: my_nginx_configs:latest
    state: ran
    volumes: /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
    volumes_from: shared