10 Gerbil in Docker

You can run Gerbil in docker using our prebuilt containers.

We offer two official docker images based on Alpine Linux:

gerbil is the base image, configured without shared libraries.
gerbilxx is the full image, configured without shared libraries and with C++ enabled. It also includes all the foreign dependencies required by the officially supported external packages.
Supported architectures are aarch64 and x86_64.
:latest always points at the last release, e.g. v0.18.1
:master points to the latest merge into the master branch.

Alpine was chosen due to the static compilation environment and capabilities it provides.

If you want to build your own container, perhaps based on some other distribution, you can use our Dockerfile.

10.1 Running Gerbil in Docker

docker run -it gerbil/gerbil will invoke the Gerbil repl.

10.2 Building static executable binaries using the `gerbilxx` image.

Here is an example of building a static binary for a gerbil project.

`build.ss`

#!/usr/bin/env gxi
;; -*- Gerbil -*-

(import :std/build-script)

(defbuild-script
  '("confluence/client"
	(exe: "confluence/confluence")))

`Makefile`

PROJECT := confluence

ARCH := $(shell uname -m)
DOCKER_IMAGE := "gerbil/gerbilxx:$(ARCH)"

default: linux-static-docker

build-release:
	/opt/gerbil/bin/gxpkg link $(PROJECT) /src || true
	/opt/gerbil/bin/gxpkg deps -i
    /opt/gerbil/bin/gxpkg build --release $(PROJECT)

linux-static-docker: clean
	docker run -it \
	-e GERBIL_PATH=/src/.gerbil \
	-e USER=$(USER) \
	-v $(PWD):/src:z \
	$(DOCKER_IMAGE) \
	make -C /src build-release

clean:
	rm -rf .gerbil

install:
	mv .gerbil/bin/$(PROJECT) /usr/local/bin/$(PROJECT)

10.3 Building docker images

There are several variations you can build out on docker. We produce ubuntu and fedora images for x86_64 used in the creation of the deb and rpm packages.

Build using custom branch

cd gerbil/docker && make gerbil BRANCH=my-fixup-branch

Building from your own repository

cd gerbil/docker && make gerbil REPO=my-github-user/gerbil