Conda VIRTUAL_ENV environment variable - environment-variables

Is there are robust way to automatically update (or set) an environment variable VIRTUAL_ENV equal to the CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV environment variable? e.g. upon running conda activate <env_name> or conda deactivate?
Ideally when I create new environments I don't want to have to do anything extra, either. e.g. if I conda create -n <env_name> && conda activate <env_name> that should automatically update the VIRTUAL_ENV environment variable.
I would like to do this as a solution that works with any shell (currently using zsh on MacOS) theme that uses the VIRTUAL_ENV variable to modify the prompt display.

Conda already updates the CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV variable at activation, see this answer for more information. It could be an easier / standard solution to modify your prompt display to use this variable instead of VIRTUAL_ENV?
# from the base env activate the prophet env
echo $CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV && \
conda activate prophet && \
echo $CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV
# base
# prophet
It is the code used by some well known zsh themes: Starship and Spaceship.
// Reference implementation: https://github.com/denysdovhan/spaceship-prompt/blob/master/sections/conda.zsh
let conda_env = context.get_env("CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV").unwrap_or_default();
from Starship code
If you want to stick to a custom variable you can create a script to wrap all the commands and define the v, but it's a bit hacky.
ENV_NAME=my-env
conda create -n $ENV_NAME -y && \
conda env config vars set VIRTUAL_ENV=$ENV_NAME -n $ENV_NAME && \
conda activate $ENV_NAME && \
echo "$VIRTUAL_ENV"
# my-env

Related

Building a multi-architecture Docker image, but Dockerfile requires different packages depending on architecture

I am experimenting with docker's buildx and noticed that everything seems to be straight forward except for one thing. My Dockerfile needs to pull certain packages depending on the architecture.
For example, here's a piece of the Dockerfile:
FROM XYZ
# Set environment variable for non-interactive install
ARG DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
# Run basic commands to update the image and install basic stuff.
RUN apt update && \
apt dist-upgrade -y -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confdef" -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confold" && \
apt autoremove -y && \
apt clean -y && \
...
# Install amazon-ssm-agent
mkdir /tmp/ssm && \
curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/debian_amd64/amazon-ssm-agent.deb -o /tmp/ssm/amazon-ssm-agent.deb && \
As you can see from above, the command is set to pull down the Amazon SSM agent using a hard-coded link.
What's the best way to approach this? Should I just modify this Dockerfile to create a bunch of if conditions?
Docker automatically defines a set of ARGs for you when you're using the BuildKit backend (which is now the default). You need to declare that ARG, and then (within the RUN command) you can use an environment variable $TARGETOS to refer to the target operating system (the documentation suggests linux or windows).
FROM ...
# Must be explicitly declared, and after FROM
ARG TARGETOS
# Then it can be used like a normal environment variable
RUN curl https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-$TARGETOS/...
There is a similar $TARGETPLATFORM if you need to build either x86 or ARM images, but its syntax doesn't necessarily match what's in this URL. If $TARGETPLATFORM is either amd64 or arm, you may need to reconstruct the Debian architecture string. You can set a shell variable within a single RUN command and it will last until the end of that command, but no longer.
ARG TARGETPLATFORM
RUN DEBARCH="$TARGETPLATFORM"; \
if [ "$DEBARCH" = "arm" ]; then DEBARCH=arm64; fi; \
curl .../debian-$DEBARCH/...

How to set environment variables within Dockerfile's RUN?

I need to set the output of a RUN command to be an environment variable that is available inside my container after it's built:
...
RUN ...
GO111MODULE=on go get github.com/emersion/hydroxide/cmd/hydroxide && \
echo "the_password" | hydroxide auth the_username#protonmail.com > bridge_password.txt && \
BRIDGE_PASSWORD=`sed -n 's/Password: Bridge password: //p' bridge_password.txt` && \
hydroxide smtp
...
Above, I need $BRIDGE_PASSWORD to be available in my NodeJS project (process.env.BRIDGE_PASSWORD). How can I achieve this?
You need to:
Declare your env var with the ENV command in your Dockerfile.
Substitute your current RUN with a command in your image entrypoint so that the variable gets set correctly everytime your start a new container and is available to any launched command.

How to unset "ENV" in dockerfile?

For some certain reasons, I have to set "http_proxy" and "https_proxy" ENV in my dockerfile. I would like to now unset them because there are also some building process can't be done through the proxy.
# dockerfile
# ... some process
ENV http_proxy=http://...
ENV https_proxy=http://...
# ... some process that needs the proxy to finish
UNSET ENV http_proxy # how to I unset the proxy ENV here?
UNSET ENV https_proxy
# ... some process that can't use the proxy
It depends on what effect you are trying to achieve.
Note that, as a matter of pragmatics (i.e. how developers actually speak), "unsetting a variable" can mean two things: removing it from the environment, or setting the variable to an empty value. Technically, these are two different operations. In practice though I have not run into a case where the software I'm trying to control differentiates between the variable being absent from the environment, and the variable being present in the environment but set to an empty value. I generally can use either method to get the same result.
If you don't care whether the variable is in the layers produced by Docker, but leaving it with a non-empty value causes problems in later build steps.
For this case, you can use ENV VAR_NAME= at the point in your Dockerfile from which you want to unset the variable. Syntactic note: Docker allows two syntaxes for ENV: this ENV VAR=1 is the same as ENV VAR 1. You can separate the variable name from the value with a space or an equal sign. When you want to "unset" a variable by setting it to an empty value you must use the equal sign syntax or you get an error at build time.
So for instance, you could do this:
ENV NOT_SENSITIVE some_value
RUN something
ENV NOT_SENSITIVE=
RUN something_else
When something runs, NOT_SENSITIVE is set to some_value. When something_else runs, NOT_SENSITIVE is set to the empty string.
It is important to note that doing unset NOT_SENSITIVE as a shell command will not affect anything else than what executes in this shell. Here's an example:
ENV NOT_SENSITIVE some_value
RUN unset NOT_SENSITIVE && printenv NOT_SENSITIVE || echo "does not exist"
RUN printenv NOT_SENSITIVE
The first RUN will print does not exist because NOT_SENSITIVE is unset when printenv executes and because it is unset printenv returns a non-zero exit code which causes the echo to execute. The second RUN is not affected by the unset in the first RUN. It will print some_value to the screen.
But what if I need to remove the variable from the environment, not just set it to an empty value?
In this case using ENV VAR_NAME= won't work. I don't know of any way to tell Docker "from this point on, you must remove this variable from the environment, not just set it to an empty value".
If you still want to use ENV to set your variable, then you'll have to start each RUN in which you want the variable to be unset with unset VAR_NAME, which will unset it for that specific RUN only.
If you want to prevent the variable from being present in the layers produced by Docker.
Suppose that variable contains a secret and the layer could fall into the hands of people who should not have the secret. In this case you CANNOT use ENV to set the variable. A variable set with ENV is baked into the layers to which it applies and cannot be removed from those layers. In particular, (assuming the variable is named SENSITIVE) running
RUN unset SENSITIVE
does not do anything to remove it from the layer. The unset command above only removes SENSITIVE from the shell process that RUN starts. It affects only that shell. It won't affect shells spawned by CMD, ENTRYPOINT, or any command provided through running docker run at the command line.
In order to prevent the layers from containing the secret, I would use docker build --secret= and RUN --mount=type=secret.... For instance, assuming that I've stored my secret in a file named sensitive, I could have a RUN like this:
RUN --mount=type=secret,id=sensitive,target=/root/sensitive \
export SENSITIVE=$(cat /root/sensitive) \
&& [[... do stuff that requires SENSITIVE ]] \
Note that the command given to RUN does not need to end with unset SENSITIVE. Due to the way processes and their environments are managed, setting SENSITIVE in the shell spawned by RUN does not have any effect beyond what that shell itself spawns. Environment changes in this shell won't affect future shells nor will it affect what Docker bakes into the layers it creates.
Then the build can be run with:
$ DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 docker build --secret id=secret,src=path/to/sensitive [...]
The environment for the docker build command needs DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 to use BuildKit because this method of passing secrets is only available if Docker uses BuildKit to build the images.
If one needs env vars during the image build but they should not persist, just clear them. In the following example, the running container shows empty env vars.
Dockerfile
# set proxy
ARG http_proxy
ARG https_proxy
ARG no_proxy
ENV http_proxy=$http_proxy
ENV https_proxy=$http_proxy
ENV no_proxy=$no_proxy
# ... do stuff that needs the proxy during the build, like apt-get, curl, et al.
# unset proxy
ENV http_proxy=
ENV https_proxy=
ENV no_proxy=
build.sh
docker build -t the-image \
--build-arg http_proxy="$http_proxy" \
--build-arg https_proxy="$http_proxy" \
--build-arg no_proxy="$no_proxy" \
--no-cache \
.
run.sh
docker run --rm -i \
the-image \
sh << COMMANDS
env
COMMANDS
Output
no_proxy=
https_proxy=
http_proxy=
...
According to docker docs you need to use shell command instead:
FROM alpine
RUN export ADMIN_USER="mark" \
&& echo $ADMIN_USER > ./mark \
&& unset ADMIN_USER
CMD sh
See https://docs.docker.com/develop/develop-images/dockerfile_best-practices/#env for more details.
Short-answer:
Try to avoid unnecessary environment variables, so you don't need to unset them.
In case you have to unset for a command you can do the following:
RUN unset http_proxy https_proxy no_proxy \
&& execute_your_command_here
In case you have to unset for the built image you can do the following:
FROM ubuntu_with_http_proxy
ENV http_proxy= \
https_proxy= \
no_proxy=
Once environment variables are set using the ENV instruction we can't really unset them as it is detailed:
Each ENV line creates a new intermediate layer, just like RUN commands. This means that even if you unset the environment variable in a future layer, it still persists in this layer and its value can be dumped.
See: Best practices for writing Dockerfiles
Details:
I prefer to define http_proxy as an argument during build like the following:
FROM ubuntu:20.04
ARG http_proxy=http://host.docker.internal:3128
ARG https_proxy=http://host.docker.internal:3128
ARG no_proxy=.your.domain,localhost,127.0.0.1,.docker.internal
On corporate proxy we need authentication anyways, so we need to configure local proxy server listening on 127.0.0.1:3128 witch is accessible over host.docker.internal:3128 from containers. This way it also works on docker desktop if we connect to corporate network over VPN (with local/home network blocked).
Setting no_proxy is also important to avoid flooding the proxy server.
See the following article for more details on no_proxy related topics:
Can we standardize NO_PROXY?
Sometimes it is also good to read the related documentation:
ENV
ARG
In case we need to configure those environment variables we can use the following command:
during build (link):
docker build ... --build-arg http_proxy='http://alternative.proxy:3128/' ...
during runs (link):
docker run ... -env http_proxy='http://alternative.proxy:3128/' ...
Also note that we don't even need to define proxy related arguments since those are already predefine according to the following section:
Dockerfile reference - Predefined ARGs
You can add below lines in the Dockerfile
ENV http_proxy ""
ENV https_proxy ""
I found the secret approach didn't work because I needed the env variable to persist in the container when I ran it in interactive mode but then needed to completely remove the variable for a later stage build for production.
What worked was in building for the development phase I appended the environment variable to the /root/.basrc file as
RUN echo export AWS_PROFILE=role-name >> /root/.bashrc
``
In the production stage of the build I then removed the last line of /root/.bashrc:
RUN sed -i '$ d' /root/.bashrc

ARG or ENV, which one to use in this case?

This could be maybe a trivial question but reading docs for ARG and ENV doesn't put things clear to me.
I am building a PHP-FPM container and I want to give the ability for enable/disable some extensions on user needs.
Would be great if this could be done in the Dockerfile by adding conditionals and passing flags on the build command perhaps but AFAIK is not supported.
In my case and my personal approach is to run a small script when container starts, something like the following:
#!/bin/sh
set -e
RESTART="false"
# This script will be placed in /config/init/ and run when container starts.
if [ "$INSTALL_XDEBUG" == "true" ]; then
printf "\nInstalling Xdebug ...\n"
yum install -y php71-php-pecl-xdebug
RESTART="true"
fi
...
if [ "$RESTART" == "true" ]; then
printf "\nRestarting php-fpm ...\n"
supervisorctl restart php-fpm
fi
exec "$#"
This is how my Dockerfile looks like:
FROM reynierpm/centos7-supervisor
ENV TERM=xterm \
PATH="/root/.composer/vendor/bin:${PATH}" \
INSTALL_COMPOSER="false" \
COMPOSER_ALLOW_SUPERUSER=1 \
COMPOSER_ALLOW_XDEBUG=1 \
COMPOSER_DISABLE_XDEBUG_WARN=1 \
COMPOSER_HOME="/root/.composer" \
COMPOSER_CACHE_DIR="/root/.composer/cache" \
SYMFONY_INSTALLER="false" \
SYMFONY_PROJECT="false" \
INSTALL_XDEBUG="false" \
INSTALL_MONGO="false" \
INSTALL_REDIS="false" \
INSTALL_HTTP_REQUEST="false" \
INSTALL_UPLOAD_PROGRESS="false" \
INSTALL_XATTR="false"
RUN yum install -y https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm \
https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
RUN yum install -y \
yum-utils \
git \
zip \
unzip \
nano \
wget \
php71-php-fpm \
php71-php-cli \
php71-php-common \
php71-php-gd \
php71-php-intl \
php71-php-json \
php71-php-mbstring \
php71-php-mcrypt \
php71-php-mysqlnd \
php71-php-pdo \
php71-php-pear \
php71-php-xml \
php71-pecl-apcu \
php71-php-pecl-apfd \
php71-php-pecl-memcache \
php71-php-pecl-memcached \
php71-php-pecl-zip && \
yum clean all && rm -rf /tmp/yum*
RUN ln -sfF /opt/remi/php71/enable /etc/profile.d/php71-paths.sh && \
ln -sfF /opt/remi/php71/root/usr/bin/{pear,pecl,phar,php,php-cgi,phpize} /usr/local/bin/. && \
mv -f /etc/opt/remi/php71/php.ini /etc/php.ini && \
ln -s /etc/php.ini /etc/opt/remi/php71/php.ini && \
rm -rf /etc/php.d && \
mv /etc/opt/remi/php71/php.d /etc/. && \
ln -s /etc/php.d /etc/opt/remi/php71/php.d
COPY container-files /
RUN chmod +x /config/bootstrap.sh
WORKDIR /data/www
EXPOSE 9001
Currently this is working but ... If I want to add let's say 20 (a random number) of extensions or any other feature that can be enable|disable then I will end with 20 non necessary ENV (because Dockerfile doesn't support .env files) definition whose only purpose would be set this flag for let the script knows what to do then ...
Is this the right way to do it?
Should I use ENV for this purpose?
I am open to ideas if you have a different approach for achieve this please let me know about it
From Dockerfile reference:
The ARG instruction defines a variable that users can pass at build-time to the builder with the docker build command using the --build-arg <varname>=<value> flag.
The ENV instruction sets the environment variable <key> to the value <value>.
The environment variables set using ENV will persist when a container is run from the resulting image.
So if you need build-time customization, ARG is your best choice.
If you need run-time customization (to run the same image with different settings), ENV is well-suited.
If I want to add let's say 20 (a random number) of extensions or any other feature that can be enable|disable
Given the number of combinations involved, using ENV to set those features at runtime is best here.
But you can combine both by:
building an image with a specific ARG
using that ARG as an ENV
That is, with a Dockerfile including:
ARG var
ENV var=${var}
You can then either build an image with a specific var value at build-time (docker build --build-arg var=xxx), or run a container with a specific runtime value (docker run -e var=yyy)
So if want to set the value of an environment variable to something different for every build then we can pass these values during build time and we don't need to change our docker file every time.
While ENV, once set cannot be overwritten through command line values. So, if we want to have our environment variable to have different values for different builds then we could use ARG and set default values in our docker file. And when we want to overwrite these values then we can do so using --build-args at every build without changing our docker file.
For more details, you can refer this.
Why to use ARG or ENV ?
Let's say we have a jar file and we want to make a docker image of it. So, we can ship it to any docker engine.
We can write a Dockerfile.
Dockerfile
FROM eclipse-temurin:17-jdk-alpine
VOLUME /tmp
ARG JAR_FILE
COPY ${JAR_FILE} app.jar
ENTRYPOINT ["java","-jar","/app.jar"]
Now, if we want to build the docker image using Maven, we can pass the JAR_FILE using the --build-arg as target/*.jar
docker build --build-arg JAR_FILE=target/*.jar -t myorg/myapp
However, if we are using Gradle; the above command doesn't work and we've to pass a different path: build/libs/
docker build --build-arg JAR_FILE=build/libs/*.jar -t myorg/myapp .
Once you have chosen a build system, we don’t need the ARG. We can hard code the JAR location.
For Maven, that would be as follows:
Dockerfile
FROM eclipse-temurin:17-jdk-alpine
VOLUME /tmp
COPY target/*.jar app.jar
ENTRYPOINT ["java","-jar","/app.jar"]
here, we can build an image with the following command:
docker build -t image:tag .
When to use `ENV`?
If we want to set some values at running containers and reflect that to the image like the Port Number that your application can run/listen on. We can set that using the ENV.
Both ARG and ENV seem very similar. Both can be accessed from within our Dockerfile commands in the same manner.
Example:
ARG VAR_A 5
ENV VAR_B 6
RUN echo $VAR_A
RUN echo $VAR_B
Personal Option!
There is a tradeoff between choosing ARG over ENV. If you choose ARG you can't change it later during the run. However, if you chose ENV you can modify the value at the container.
I personally prefer ARG over ENV wherever I can, like,
In the above Example:
I have used ARG as the build system maven or Gradle impacts during build rather than runtime. It thus encapsulates a lot of details and provided a minimum set of arguments for the runtime.
For more details, you can refer to this.

In a Dockerfile, How to update PATH environment variable?

I have a dockerfile that download and builds GTK from source, but the following line is not updating my image's environment variable:
RUN PATH="/opt/gtk/bin:$PATH"
RUN export PATH
I read that that I should be using ENV to set environment values, but the following instruction doesn't seem to work either:
ENV PATH /opt/gtk/bin:$PATH
This is my entire Dockerfile:
FROM ubuntu
RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get install -y golang gcc make wget git libxml2-utils libwebkit2gtk-3.0-dev libcairo2 libcairo2-dev libcairo-gobject2 shared-mime-info libgdk-pixbuf2.0-* libglib2-* libatk1.0-* libpango1.0-* xserver-xorg xvfb
# Downloading GTKcd
RUN wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/sources/gtk+/3.12/gtk+-3.12.2.tar.xz
RUN tar xf gtk+-3.12.2.tar.xz
RUN cd gtk+-3.12.2
# Setting environment variables before running configure
RUN CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/gtk/include"
RUN LDFLAGS="-L/opt/gtk/lib"
RUN PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/opt/gtk/lib/pkgconfig"
RUN export CPPFLAGS LDFLAGS PKG_CONFIG_PATH
RUN ./configure --prefix=/opt/gtk
RUN make
RUN make install
# running ldconfig after make install so that the newly installed libraries are found.
RUN ldconfig
# Setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable so the systems dynamic linker can find the newly installed libraries.
RUN LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/gtk/lib"
# Updating PATH environment program so that utility binaries installed by the various libraries will be found.
RUN PATH="/opt/gtk/bin:$PATH"
RUN export LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH
# Collecting garbage
RUN rm -rf gtk+-3.12.2.tar.xz
# creating go code root
RUN mkdir gocode
RUN mkdir gocode/src
RUN mkdir gocode/bin
RUN mkdir gocode/pkg
# Setting the GOROOT and GOPATH enviornment variables, any commands created are automatically added to PATH
RUN GOROOT=/usr/lib/go
RUN GOPATH=/root/gocode
RUN PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$PATH
RUN export GOROOT GOPATH PATH
You can use Environment Replacement in your Dockerfile as follows:
ENV PATH="${PATH}:/opt/gtk/bin"
Although the answer that Gunter posted was correct, it is not different than what I already had posted. The problem was not the ENV directive, but the subsequent instruction RUN export $PATH
There's no need to export the environment variables, once you have declared them via ENV in your Dockerfile.
As soon as the RUN export ... lines were removed, my image was built successfully
[I mentioned this in response to the selected answer, but it was suggested to make it more prominent as an answer of its own]
It should be noted that
ENV PATH="/opt/gtk/bin:${PATH}"
may not be the same as
ENV PATH="/opt/gtk/bin:$PATH"
The former, with curly brackets, might provide you with the host's PATH. The documentation doesn't suggest this would be the case, but I have observed that it is. This is simple to check just do RUN echo $PATH and compare it to RUN echo ${PATH}
This is discouraged (if you want to create/distribute a clean Docker image), since the PATH variable is set by /etc/profile script, the value can be overridden.
head /etc/profile:
if [ "`id -u`" -eq 0 ]; then
PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"
else
PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games"
fi
export PATH
At the end of the Dockerfile, you could add:
RUN echo "export PATH=$PATH" > /etc/environment
So PATH is set for all users.

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