Hello fans of the Armed Bear,
As you've probably noticed, Docker and similar technologies are extremely popular these days. Additionally, there is unfortunately no Common Lisp representation in Docker's Official Images program (the Docker standard library, if you will). I'd like to change that and ABCL seems like a good candidate to start with because it's both relatively simple to Dockerize and Mark is supportive of getting CL representation in that program.
I've been maintaining some Common Lisp related Docker images in my personal namespace (daewok) for several years now. I recently moved the repos to a gitlab.common-lisp.net group (mirrored to Github) and have cleaned up/gotten ABCL's repos into a state where I believe they adhere to all of the Official Image program's guidelines and are ready for inclusion.
I wanted to reach out to 1) get any feedback from ABCL devs and users to make sure the images are useful and 2) get consent from the ABCL devs to submit to the program.
First, the code:
The Dockerfiles themselves are located at https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/cl-docker-images/abcl
The manifest for inclusion in the Official Images program is at https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/cl-docker-images/official-images/-/blob/abcl/...
The documentation for inclusion on Docker Hub is at https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/cl-docker-images/docs/-/tree/abcl/abcl
All of these are also mirrored to the cl-docker-images org on Github.
The images are built for the cross product of {buster, windowsservercore-1809, windowsservercore-ltsc2016} x {jdk8, jdk11, jdk15} x {arm64, amd64} (except for all combos containing jdk8 and arm64). The current versions of the images are located at https://hub.docker.com/r/daewok/abcl if you would like to check them out.
I am planning that only the latest version of ABCL will be "supported". The initial request would also backfill 1.7.1. Once a version becomes unsupported it would not be removed from Docker hub, it just receives no more base image updates.
Next, some info about Docker Official Images:
Documentation on the program is located at https://docs.docker.com/docker-hub/official_images/ and https://github.com/docker-library/official-images
In summary, every image in the program is reviewed by a team for best practices and security, built by that team, and is available for pulling without specifying a namespace (e.g., `docker pull abcl:latest`). This helps give users confidence in the code they're running, as opposed to pulling from random personal namespaces.
Even the Official Images team admits that "Official Images" is not a great name as it can imply that the upstream of the software contained in the image maintains the images when that is frequently not the case. As I'm not an ABCL dev myself, the image would be considered community maintained and the description on Docker Hub would clearly point to the cl-docker-images/abcl repo as where to file issues with the images. But it is very conceivable that random users may show up on this list asking for help. I am subscribed to this list and will do my best to redirect/answer any of those types of emails that come in.
Thoughts, questions, concerns?
-Eric