README.md

Box: A Next-Generation Builder for Docker Images

Box is a builder for docker that gives you the power of mruby, a limited, embeddable ruby. It allows for notions of conditionals, loops, and data structures for use within your builder plan. If you've written a Dockerfile before, writing a box build plan is easy.

• Unique general features:

  • mruby syntax
  • filtering of keywords to secure builds

• In the build plan itself:

  • Tagging
  • Flattening
  • Debug mode (drop to a shell in the middle of a plan run and inspect your container)
  • Ruby block methods for user (with_user) and workdir (inside) allow you to scope copy and run operations for a more obvious build plan.

• Download Release v0.1

• Extended Documentation for Syntax and Usage

Example

This will fetch the golang image, update APT and then install the packages set in the packages variable. Then it will tag the whole image as mypackages.

Save it to plan.rb and run it with box plan.rb or box < plan.rb to read it from stdin. Box only copies what it needs to; your whole directory won't be uploaded to docker.

from "golang"

packages = "build-essential g++ git wget curl ruby bison flex"

run "apt-get update"
run "apt-get install -y #{packages}"

tag "mypackages"

Advanced Use

The documentation is the best resource for learning the different verbs and functions. However, check out our own build plan for box for an example of how to use different predicates, functions, and verbs to get everything you need out of it.

Development Instructions

• Requires: compiler, bison, flex
• go get -d https://github.com/erikh/box && cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/erikh/box
• To build on the host:
  • make
• To build a docker image for your dev environment (needed for test and release builds):
  • make bootstrap
• To run the tests without a dev environment configured:
  • make bootstrap-test
• If you have a dev environment:
  • make test
    • note that if you are building both on the hosts and in the test containers, IGNORE_LIBMRUBY=1 may be of interest to you if you get linking errors or GC panics.
• To do a release build:
  • make release