How to get started development inside docker container in windows operating system - docker

I am a developer who is using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS regularly for my development. I never install any packages like, node, PHP, python in the OS and make use of docker for the purpose. VS Code is the editor I use, and the extension of the remote container will help me to develop & debug inside the docker container.
Right now, I am in the process of moving the development to a windows environment and I wanted to follow a similar workflow there too. Unfortunately, I am facing few issues like "file changes are not getting detected" (when npm serve in angular and react projects).
https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4739
https://www.reddit.com/r/bashonubuntuonwindows/comments/c48yej/wsl_2_react_not_reloading_with_file_changes/
I have tried different methods to solve the issue like
use wsl2 and then docker inside that and then serve from the container
use just docker and serve the code from inside the container
Regardless of the methods, the file changes are not getting detected inside the docker.
Trust me I have gone through many bizarre words like inotify, increasing the watchers, etc... Nothing helped.
Is there a developer out there following a similar practice in a Windows environment? (docker + windows)
Any help is highly appreciated.

I suggest moving the files to the wsl2 file system and not the windows.
Wsl2 'sees' the windows file system from inside a mount image /mnt/c .
Move out of it, like at ~ (cd ~) and i think your files will be normally watched .

Related

Cannot pull the project from Bitbucket (the project is with IP restrictions) while using Docker with WSL2 Ubuntu-20.04 Distro

I've a Symfony project that I am running on my PC with Symfony serve.
This project is on Bitbucket that has IP restrictions, I can only work from home and nowhere else for security reasons, and all works just fine :).
I wanted to create a Docker image so that I can easily change my machine and be able to deploy it elsewhere.
So I created a Docker image and did the necesseray configurations and all seems good, I can open the project and work the same way as before. The Docker has the default WSL (WSL1) and I've noticed that the application isn't running as fast as usual (outside the Docker, to load a page it would take 3 seconds, while with Docker it takes at least 30 seconds).
I did some research and found out that I could use the WSL2 with DOCKER which provides better performance than the legacy Hyper-V Backend and Enabled integration for the distro UBUNTU-20.4. The problem using the WSL2 is that I am no longer able to pull my project in the WSL2 (from the Ubuntu-20.0) because of the IP restrictions.
It is really strange that I cannot find any configuration for this and I have no idea what should I do to change it. If I pull the project outside the WLS2 distro it works, with the default WSL it works also but not with the WSL2.
I removed the IP restrcitions and the Docker image worked fine, I have the same speed as If I was outside the Docker. The only problem is that I cannot use the IP restrcitoins for this !
Does anyone know how to fix this ? I haven't been able to find any documentation for this issue.
I am using Windows 10 and the Docker version : 4.5.1 (74721)
Thanks a lot for any information.

Can we debug .NET desktop apps in Docker container

(The more I dig this, the more confusing it gets. I have found Windows images available to download, but none of them appears to be the standard desktop OS)
Is there a way to debug my .NET Framework or .NET Core/5/6 desktop application (WinForms, WPF, VSTO) in a Docker container running Windows 10? I'm just trying to setup a playground environment that I could put together quickly and test my code.
For my own notes and any future beginner, here is my current finding:
Docker is not a full-fledged virtual machine like what we get with VirtualBox, VMWare etc. It's more like a process in an isolated environment, called a Container. For example you could create a container that runs an instance of MySQL, or a container that runs an instance of NodeJS. Of course there are images containing Operating System too, such as Ubuntu, Alpine or even Windows, but those images do not contain the full desktop environment; they are just the base OS services.
So answering the question, no, this is not (currently?) possible at least for Windows. People have had success running Ubuntu desktop inside a Docker container, but that is an advanced topic and only works in Linux-based containers. I haven't seen anything like that for Windows.

How to setup dockerized binaries in VSCode

I have learned to use docker as development server (LAMP and MEAN) and now I feel I should take next step, By removing PHP and node binaries from system and use binaries from containers. So on a fresh Solus install, I setup containers for PHP, node, Ruby etc. Solus already recommends using containers for such tasks. But I got stuck on first day.
I installed vs code (Code-oss) on installed extensions (prettier, PHPCS etc) on it, and they need path of installed binaries (path/to/phpcs, path/to/node etc).
I initially set up configuration path as
docker run -it --rm herloct/phpcs phpcs
based on https://gist.github.com/barraq/e7f85262bc7a0af2d8d8884d27b62d2c but using more updated container. It didn't work, So I set it up as alias thinking it would fool VSCode into thinking it is native command, but it didn't work either. I have confirmed that using those command directly from terminal does work, But VSCode PHPIntellisense extension does not want to work.
Any suggestion?
P.S. Any tip to keep container running in background as to avoid container bootup delay everytime I use PHPCS or javac from container? I can keep LAMP server running but everytime I enter terminal tools, it loads up new container to execute command, and then kill container causing delay for bootup and closing.
In case it is still relevant to someone: You might want to create a VS Code development container to use dockerized binaries.
For this to work, a .devcontainer.json is required which could be as simple as:
{
"image": "mcr.microsoft.com/vscode/devcontainers/typescript-node:0-12"
}

what programs can be installed in a docker container

I am a Windows user.
I have looked at the official Docker tutorial "Get Started". The example focus is a python app. I don't know python and I guess a Docker container can have many programs installed as an environment, not just python.
Is Docker good for testing a program I download from the internet in an isolated environment (like a sandbox in firewalls or antivirus) ?
How for example can I make a container that has an environment containing installed programs like Visual Studio, VLC player, Office, etc.?
Thanks,
Abe
Yes; you can have an isolated environment with docker. You can set your desired configurations, download from internet, install, and whatever you do in a Virtual Machine.
Yes, you can. What your container contains depends on the base image you create it FROM and packages you install inside of it.
Tips
You can build your container from an empty OS (e.g. ubuntu), configure the OS, download/install/configure/run whatever you want.
You can create a base image which derives FROM a suitable OS, then install any basic application (e.g. firefox) which you may use in a lot of containers on it. Then you should push it in a registry (e.g. Github). After that, you can use it as a base image for other containers, so your new containers have installed applications by default; no need to install them again. It reduces complexity and repetitions in Dockerfile.

How do you run an .exe file on Docker?

I am currently trying to understand and learn Docker. I have an app, .exe file, and I would like to run it on either Linux or OSX by creating a Docker. I've searched online but I can't find anything allowing one to do that, and I don't know Docker well enough to try and improvise something. Is this possible? Would I have to use Boot2Docker? Could you please point me in the right direction? Thank you in advance any help is appreciated.
Docker allows you to isolate applications running on a host, it does not provide a different OS to run those applications on (with the exception of a the client products that include a Linux VM since Docker was originally a Linux only tool). If the application runs on Linux, it can typically run inside a container. If the application cannot run on Linux, then it will not run inside a Linux container.
An exe is a windows binary format. This binary format incompatible with Linux (unless you run it inside of an emulator or VM). I'm not aware of any easy way to accomplish your goal. If you want to run this binary, then skip Docker on Linux and install a Windows VM on your host.
As other answers have said, Docker doesn't emulate the entire Windows OS that you would need in order to run an executable 'exe' file. However, there's another tool that may do something similar to what you want: "Wine" app from WineHQ. An abbreviated summary from their site:
Wine is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications
on several operating systems, such as Linux and macOS.
Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual
machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls
on-the-fly, eliminating the performance and memory penalties of
other methods and allowing you to cleanly integrate Windows
applications into your desktop.
(I don't work with nor for WineHQ, nor have I actually used it yet. I've only heard of it, and it seems like it might be a solution for running a Windows program inside of a light-weight container.)

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