Syntaxnet spec file and Docker? - docker

Question

I'm trying to learn Synatxnet. I have it running through Docker. But I really dont know much about either program Synatxnet or Docker. On the Github Sytaxnet page it says
The SyntaxNet models are configured via a combination of run-time
flags (which are easy to change) and a text format TaskSpec protocol
buffer. The spec file used in the demo is in
syntaxnet/models/parsey_mcparseface/context.pbtxt.
How exactly do I find the spec file to edit it?
I compiled SyntaxNet in a Docker container using these Instructions.
FROM java:8
ENV SYNTAXNETDIR=/opt/tensorflow PATH=$PATH:/root/bin
RUN mkdir -p $SYNTAXNETDIR \
&& cd $SYNTAXNETDIR \
&& apt-get update \
&& apt-get install git zlib1g-dev file swig python2.7 python-dev python-pip -y \
&& pip install --upgrade pip \
&& pip install -U protobuf==3.0.0b2 \
&& pip install asciitree \
&& pip install numpy \
&& wget https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/releases/download/0.2.2b/bazel-0.2.2b-installer-linux-x86_64.sh \
&& chmod +x bazel-0.2.2b-installer-linux-x86_64.sh \
&& ./bazel-0.2.2b-installer-linux-x86_64.sh --user \
&& git clone --recursive https://github.com/tensorflow/models.git \
&& cd $SYNTAXNETDIR/models/syntaxnet/tensorflow \
&& echo "\n\n\n" | ./configure \
&& apt-get autoremove -y \
&& apt-get clean
RUN cd $SYNTAXNETDIR/models/syntaxnet \
&& bazel test --genrule_strategy=standalone syntaxnet/... util/utf8/...
WORKDIR $SYNTAXNETDIR/models/syntaxnet
CMD [ "sh", "-c", "echo 'Bob brought the pizza to Alice.' | syntaxnet/demo.sh" ]
# COMMANDS to build and run
# ===============================
# mkdir build && cp Dockerfile build/ && cd build
# docker build -t syntaxnet .
# docker run syntaxnet

Answer 1

First, comment out the command line in the dockerfile, then create and cd into an empty directory on your host machine. You can then create a container from the image, mounting a directory in the container to your hard-drive:
docker run -it --rm -v /pwd:/tmp bash
You'll now have a bash session in the container. Copy the spec file into /tmp from /opt/tensorflow/syntaxnet/models/parsey_mcparseface/context.pbtxt (I'm guessing that's where it is given the info you've provided above -- I can't get your dockerfile to build an image so I can't confirm it; you can always run find . -name context.pbtxt from root to find it), and exit the container (ctrl-d or exit).
You now have the file on your host's hd ready to edit, but you really want it in a running container. If the directory it comes from contains only that file, then you can simply mount your host directory at that path in the container. If it contains other things, then you can use a, so called, bootstrap script to move the file from your mounted directory (in the example above, that's tmp) to its home location. Alternatively, you may be able to tell the software where to find the spec file with a flag, but that will take more research.