Using docker for development

Although it can often be useful to set up a local development environment with system-provided or self-built dependencies, Docker provides a convenient alternative to quickly get all the dependencies needed to start development of HPX. Our testing setup on CircleCI uses a docker image to run all tests.

To get started you need to install Docker using whatever means is most convenient on your system. Once you have Docker installed you can pull or directly run the docker image. The image is based on Debian and Clang, and can be found on Docker Hub. To start a container using the HPX build environment run:

docker run --interactive --tty stellargroup/build_env:ubuntu bash

You are now in an environment where all the HPX build and runtime dependencies are present. You can install additional packages according to your own needs. Please see the Docker Documentation for more information on using Docker.

Warning

All changes made within the container are lost when the container is closed. If you want files to persist (e.g. the HPX source tree) after closing the container you can bind directories from the host system into the container (see Docker Documentation (Bind mounts)).