Ruffin,

We're actively using Docker in the new build farm that we are currently developing [1]. I think it's awesome and could even be really good for deploying ROS onto robots in the future. But I wonder, for end users who want to use graphical tools like rviz and rqt does Docker provide a good option for that? I've been watching some work like https://github.com/rogaha/docker-desktop which seems to imply it can , but I haven't tried running things like rviz in Docker before.

I think having official Docker images for the core, non-graphical parts of ROS make total sense, and maybe more if the graphical tools also end up working with Docker too.

On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 8:50 PM, Ruffin White <roxfoxpox@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello everyone,

I wanted to ask the community and the admins if there would be any interest in making an official ROS repo for the Docker Hub Registry?

I've been using ROS with Docker for a while now, and I've found it really helpful for my ROS projects. Learning how to use Linux containers takes a bit of a learning curve but once you get a hang of it, its like you can't stop thinking inside the container.

So I've been using it as development environment tool as well as a platform for sharing working demos, as well as the a perfect tool for deploying apps to robots. For one of my research lab's projects, OmniMapper, I've been documenting my progress in our github wiki pages. I made a docker image for the demo, allowing novices users to skip much of the tedious build and dependency processes, and get straight to running and playing with the project, as I explain in this tutorial.

I have to say, I'm not the first to do this, it seem to be trending here and there, so just to cite a few:
Gernot Klingler and his a detailed post: How docker replaced my virtual machines and chroots, a guide in how to enable a container to connect to an x-server and graphical hardware acceleration.
opencog with examples in the use of Docker for research and collaboration within the robotics community.
quantumobject / docker-ros-base
This sort of reminds me how I got into using ROS when first playing with it in virtual machines, like these ones, way back when. But know I can get bare metal performance, mount any arbitrary directories or hardware from my host, and keep my images tiny on disk. Plus, I get to pick any modern Linux distro to use as a host, not just Ubuntu.

So I've followed the Guidelines for Creating and Documenting Official Repositories, and have a few proposed images for both Indigo and Hydro. I have a fork of rosdistro with the necessary Dockerfiles (just my first though on where to pull request them into), and a fork of docker-library/docs with the appropriate entry for ROS image conforming to the registry's standards.

I can contact the Docker Hub admins to get the project added, I just wanted to get in touch with the admins first and get the community's blessing.

Feedback welcome!

Ruffin

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