prezto/container-README.md

Prezto Docker Container

This branch contains a Dockerfile and a Makefile that hopefully may prove helpful for prezto development.

The idea is to have a totally independent and isolated environemnet in which to test changes to either prezto-core or any plugin that you may be working on, without disrupting your environment, thus enabling automated testing and even continuous integration.

This is a proof of concept, it may not be even a good idea to have this on the main prezto repository. on the other hand, the container image should depend on the code, so if the team finds this to be a useful tool, there are choices to be made in that respect. My intention is to introduce this as a helpful tool for development and for new users to try prezto easely

Here is a screencast showing what the container can do so far

The container is a basic install of alpine linux so the download is reasonably small at around 200M, since debian based images can weigh in around 1.5G.

On the container we have a few utilities and additional software that prezto has core support for, (tmux, make, etc) and you can try it i easily by running:

    docker pull hlecuanda/prezto-dev:latest

once you have the image, create a container from it:

    docker run -it --rm -h prezto hlecuanda/prezto-dev:latest

That will create an interactive (--it) ephemeral container (--rm) whose hostname is prezto (-h prezto) based on the aforementioned imag. you should be sitting at the plain sorin prompt in a brand new prezto instance.

A development and testing workflow can be achieved by mounting a project's directory on to the image's filesystem:

    cd /path/to/project/root
    docker run -it --rm -h prezto \
            -v $(pwd):/home/prezto/.zprezto/modules/${:-$(pwd):t} \
            hlecuanda/prezto-dev:latest

This will mount the current directory on the container's filesystem, you can develop on your own machine and environnment, and test your changes running on the container, your actual source will already be in-place on prezto's directory hierarchy, as if it was just cloned recursively (v.gr for modules with extenral dependencies)

Keep in mind that the containers created in this fashion are ephemeral, so anything you write on the containers filesystem will be lost, unless you remove the --rm option like so:

    cd /path/to/project/root
    docker run -it -h prezto --name prezto \
            -v $(pwd):/home/prezto/.zprezto/modules/${:-$(pwd):t} \
            hlecuanda/prezto-dev:latest

This will create a container named prezto, (--name prezto) with it's hostname set to prezto also (-h prezto) that will retain changes made to it's filesystem. When you detach, the container willi stop and you can spinit up again using:

    docker start -ai prezto

Containers started this way will remember the volume mounts they were created with, so the project directory we previously mounted with -v on the docker run command, will be ready on the image.

I have found epehermeral containers to be most useful since you get an untainted, pristine environment for testing every time you spin up the container.

Since the docker commands can be a bit verbose, the included Makefile automates some of the frequent steps in the workflow, although it can be replaced by a shell function quite easily.

hope this turns out to be useful.