eteq / astrocontainer

This is a cookiecutter template to easily create project-based containers for astronomy-related work (with a focus on a Python-based software stack).

astrocontainer

This is a cookiecutter template to easily create project-based containers for astronomy-related work (with a focus on a Python-based software stack). While of general use, this template focuses particularly on a container layout that promotes replicability via defined software in the container while maintaining flexibility by keeping the project content (e.g. Python scripts, Jupyter notebooks, large data files) on a host directory.

To use this template, you must have cookiecutter installed. Then do:

% cookiecutter https://github.com/eteq/astrocontainer.git

And follow the prompts. Once this is done, go into the generated directory, update the requirements.txt with project-specific requirements, and then follow the instructions in the project directory README.

Container manager tool choice

When creating your project, this cookiecutter template gives three options for which kind of container tool to use (that is, the container_executable option): Docker, Podman, or containerexec_link. While the first two are specific tools, the last requires additional explanation: it configures the template so that container operations are run by whatever tool the containerexec_link file points to. The intend use here is for you to set that file to be a link to a specific tool - e.g. run ln -s /usr/bin/podman containerexec_link or ln -s /usr/bin/docker containerexec_link from the root of the project. This lets you easily switch between tools by just changing the symlink without needing to re-generate the cookiecutter template.