[arch-general] Best practices for creating an Arch Docker image

[Ista Zahn]

On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 1:52 PM, Giovanni Santini via arch-general
<arch-general at archlinux.org> wrote:
> Good evening to everybody,
> I got interested in Docker lately and I've decided to create an
> ArchLinux image for it.
> There's one suggested from the ArchWiki (*base/archlinux*) but I wanted
> to learn from scratch.
> So, I've then some questions:
>
> 1. As the root filesystem, I've made a repacked version of the bootstrap
> tarball. Even though it is not so clean, it works and it is easy peasy
> to do. Should I go still for a `pacstrap`?
> 2. Theorically, one step of the Dockerfile should be installing the
> whole 'base' group, which includes also the kernel, which is not really
> needed in a container.
> So this questions splits up in 2 parts:
> - which packages I can ignore of the 'base' group?
> - which packages present in the bootstrap OS can be removed?
> This is because I think the Docker image should contain only the least
> number of packages of an Arch system; ideally, *pacman* and the needed
> core utils.
> 3. I'm having a GPGME error with the i686 tarball... Upgrading GPGME
> breaks pacman, upgrading pacman does the same. If someone is interested
> in helping me, I would be glad to share the Dockerfile.
>
> A first working code is here: https://github.com/ItachiSan/dockerfiles

There is a script in the moby  repo that might be a good starting
place (it's what I've used for building Archlinux docker images). See
https://github.com/moby/moby/blob/master/contrib/mkimage-arch.sh, and
https://github.com/IQSS/iqss-jupyter-notebook for the notes I wrote
last time I did it.

--Ista

>
> --
> Giovanni Santini
> My blog: http://giovannisantini.tk
> My code: https://git{hub,lab}.com/ItachiSan
> My GPG: 2FADEBF5