Containers for the pacs course

This repository contains the tools to build and handle the container for the repository of the Advanced Programming for Scientific Computing course. It allows you to have a copy of the repositories pacs-examples and pacs-Labs. With the material of these repositories you will be able to follow the course and do the exercises.

You must have docker installed on your system to use the containers. If you don't have it, you can install it following the instructions in the Docker website.

In this direcory you have the following folders

• Docker It contains tha basic Dockerfile that enables to build the image for the container. It is not meand for general use. If you know already how docker works and you want to fiddle with it use a copy. Personally, I suggest this option only to experiences users
• vsCode-precompiled (suggested) Also for Visual Studio Code users. This folder contains the configuration files to use the container with the IDE. You can use it to work with the material of the course. You can find the instructions to use it in the README.md file of this folder. With this version you will use a precompiled container that is stored in the Docker Hub. This version is faster to start but it is bigger than the previous one.
• vsCode For the user of Visual Studio Code, this folder contains the configuration files to use the container with the IDE. You can use it to work with the material of the course. You can find the instructions to use it in the README.md file of this folder. With this version you will build the container locally in your machine. Note that the DockerFile contained in ths hidden folder .devcontainer is just a symbolic link to the one in the Docker folder. The difference is that this one is used by the Visual Studio Code to build the container.

How to use the dev container in Visual Studio Code

It applies to both versions of the vsCode container

You should install the Dev Container extension in Visual Studio Code. You can do it by following the instructions in the Visual Studio Code documentation.

Once you have the extension installed, you just open the vsCode-precmpiled (or the vsCode, if you prefer) folder in Visual Studio Code and you will see a notification in the lower right corner of the window. Click on the notification and select the option Reopen in Container. The first time you do it, the container will be fetched from the docker hub (or built if you go in vsCode folder). If you build the container, the construction may take time, be patient.

Shared files.

If you want to share files between the host and the container, you can use the shared_files folder. This folder is in the home directory in the docker image. The shared_files folder is shared between the host and the container. If you have launched visual code from the vsCode** folders the shared_files folder is autoomatically mounted in the local shared_file subfolder. If yoou want a different binding, change the devcontainer.json file in the .devcontainer folder. If you are using docker independently from Visual Studio Code, you can use the following command to bind the shared_files folder to the container:

docker run -it --rm -v <host directory>:/home/pacs/shared_files pacs-container

Some notes

If you use a dev container in Visual Studio Code, you can pull frequently from the repositories pacs-examples and pacs-Labs to keep the material updated, following the instruction in the README.md file of the repositories.

The repositories pacs-examples and pacs-Labs are cloned in the container using the https protocol. If you want to switch to the more convenient ssh protocol, you can do it by following the instructions in the main README.md file of the repositories. This applies also for the submodules of the pacs-examples repository.