Using Docker to test X11 Applications on Windows and MacOS
Some Github repositories now produce docker images and automatically store them in Github’s own container registry, ghcr.io. I had a github repo CI action generate an image of Debian Bullseye with the latest dev branch of RawTherapee and tested new instructions for launching X11-capable linux apps like RawTherapee:
Launching ghcr.io/kd6kxr/rawtherapee_docker-image
Pre-requisites:
Windows 11 Pre-requisite: Install the Linux Subsystem for Windows via the Microsoft Store.
-
Install Docker Desktop
-
Login to Github Container Registry with your own Github
usernameand a properly scopedtoken:
docker login -u username -p token ghcr.io
- Download rawtherapee_docker-image:
$ docker pull ghcr.io/kd6kxr/rawtherapee_docker-image:latest
Windows 11+:
Pre-requisite: Install an X11 Window System: Xming
- Launch Xming by double-clicking the
Xming app icon.
In Docker Desktop:
- Select the image in the Images tab and click Run.
- Enter the volumes to map and the DISPLAY environment value
host.docker.internal:0
Result: a resizable RawTherapee window.
On MacOS 11+:
Pre-requisite: Install an X11 Window System: XQuartz
- In XQuartz app, set the Preferences>Security>Network Connections button to On.
- In Terminal, launch an xterm window:
/opt/X11/bin/xterm - In the xterm window, start the localhost listener:
xhost +localhost
/opt/X11/bin/Xquartz -depth 24-1 :0 -listen tcp &
In Docker Desktop:
- Enter the volumes to map and the DISPLAY environment value
host.docker.internal:0
Results in an optimized RawTherapee window.
Troubleshooting:
if the screen is unresponsive at first
- you may need to first dismiss a partially hidden welcome splash screen on the first run of that container.
The Dockerfile
The Dockerfile is simple Go and resides at the root level of the repository. It indicates to start off with Debian’s bullseye image, configure and build rawtherapee, and set it up to be launched on command.
FROM debian:bullseye
# add the dependencies
RUN apt-get update && DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install --no-install-recommends build-essential locales cmake git curl libcanberra-gtk3-dev libexiv2-dev libexpat-dev libfftw3-dev libglibmm-2.4-dev libgtk-3-dev libgtkmm-3.0-dev libiptcdata0-dev libjpeg-dev liblcms2-dev liblensfun-dev liblensfun-bin liblensfun-data-v1 libpng-dev libsigc++-2.0-dev libtiff5-dev zlib1g-dev librsvg2-dev ca-certificates ssl-cert -y
# prepare the environment
RUN locale-gen C.UTF-8
ENV LANG C.UTF-8
ENV LANGUAGE C.UTF-8:en
ENV LC_ALL C.UTF-8
# clone source code, checkout the dev branch
RUN mkdir -p ~/programs && git clone http://github.com/Beep6581/RawTherapee.git ~/programs/code-rawtherapee && cd ~/programs/code-rawtherapee && git checkout dev
# update lensfun
RUN cd ~/programs && lensfun-update-data
# configure build system and compile
RUN cd ~/programs/code-rawtherapee && mkdir build && cd build && cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="release" -DCACHE_NAME_SUFFIX="" -DPROC_TARGET_NUMBER="1" -DBUILD_BUNDLE="ON" -DBUNDLE_BASE_INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/programs/rawtherapee" -DOPTION_OMP="ON" -DWITH_LTO="ON" -DWITH_PROF="OFF" -DWITH_SAN="OFF" -DWITH_SYSTEM_KLT="OFF" ..
RUN cd ~/programs/code-rawtherapee/build && make -j$(nproc --all) && make install
# set the entrypoint command
LABEL maintainer="kd6kxr@gmail.com"
CMD echo "This is a test..." && ~/programs/rawtherapee/rawtherapee && echo "...end of test."
Workflow
The workflow file is in Yet Another Markup Language, and sets up the repository to build RT-dev. The Ubuntu runner builds the app system and pushes the final image to the registry. The script conveniently accesses two built-in secrets belonging to the user account: username and an access token, automatically. The workflow gets tucked away inside the /.github folder structure.
name: Docker Image CI
on:
push:
branches: [ "main" ]
pull_request:
branches: [ "main" ]
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v3
- name: Login to GitHub Container Registry
uses: docker/login-action@v2
with:
registry: ghcr.io
username: ${{ github.actor }}
password: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
- name: Build image and push
run: |
docker build . --file Dockerfile --tag ghcr.io/kd6kxr/rawtherapee_docker-image:latest
docker push ghcr.io/kd6kxr/rawtherapee_docker-image:latest
Extra credit:
A test of the metadata-exiv2 feature branch on Debian bullseye with Docker:
docker pull ghcr.io/benitoite/rawtherapee_docker-image:latest
It has both x86_64 and arm64 builds.