DockerBox

dockerbox is a tool that allows you to run command line tools using Docker instead of native binaries. It works by symlinking commands to the Dockerbox binary, which then looks up the docker run configuration and executes the docker run command for you.

Dockerbox uses configuration files written in Cuelang for specifying the Docker run configuration.

The root schema for the configuration files contains the following fields:

environ: [string]: string - This field is automatically populated with the host's environment variables at runtime.

applets: [string]: #Applet - This field is used to configure the applets.

ignore: [string]: #Applet - This field is used to instruct dockerbox to skip certain applets when running the dockerbox install command.

dockerbox will look for configuration files by walking the path of your current directory and unifying all of the files.

File names are arbitrary, but must end in .dbx.cue.

Install

$ go get github.com/sethpollack/dockerbox

By default dockerbox binaries are installed at $HOME/.dockerbox/bin/. To override you can set the following environment variable DOCKERBOX_INSTALL_DIR.

Then add dockerbox to your path:

$ export PATH=$DOCKERBOX_INSTALL_DIR:$PATH

To prevent the installation of an applet, add it to the ignore list in any of your configuration files.

$ cat <<'EOF' >$HOME/.ignore.dbx.cue
ignore: [applets.kubectl]
EOF

Install applets with dockerbox install.

$ dockerbox install
$ which kubectl
/Users/seth/.dockerbox/bin/kubectl

dockerbox installs applets by creating a symlink from $HOME/.dockerbox/bin/<applet name> to the dockerbox binary.

$ ls -l $HOME/.dockerbox/bin
kubectl -> /Users/seth/go/bin/dockerbox
terraform -> /Users/seth/go/bin/dockerbox

Full schema can be found here.

You can also override an applets settings at runtime with flags followed by a separator. The default separator is -- and can be configured with the DOCKERBOX_SEPARATOR environment variable.

For example:

applets: {
  kubectl: {
	  name: "kubectl"
	  image: "kubectl"
  }
}

If the user wants to run kubectl proxy they can either add the ports section to the config, or they can just pass an additional runtime flag which will be passed along to the docker run command.

kubectl -p 8080:8080 -- proxy --port=8080

The full flag spec can be found below:

      --after-hook strings    Run container after
      --all-envs              Pass all envars to container
      --before-hook strings   Run container before
      --command strings       Command to run in container
      --dependency strings    Run container before
  -d, --detach                Run container in background and print container ID
      --dns strings           Set custom DNS servers
      --dns-option strings    Set DNS options
      --dns-search strings    Set custom DNS search domains
      --entrypoint string     Overwrite the default ENTRYPOINT of the image
      --env-file strings      Read in a file of environment variables
      --env-filter string     Filter env vars passed to container from --all-envs
  -e, --environment strings   Set environment variables
      --hostname string       Container host name
      --image string          Container image
  -i, --interactive           Keep STDIN open even if not attached
      --inverse               Inverse env-filter
      --kill                  Kill previous run on container with same name
      --link strings          Add link to another container
      --name string           Assign a name to the container
      --network string        Connect a container to a network
      --privileged            Give extended privileges to this container
  -p, --publish strings       Publish a container's port(s) to the host
      --pull                  Pull image before running it
      --restart string        Restart policy to apply when a container exits
      --rm                    Automatically remove the container when it exits
      --tag string            Container image tag
  -t, --tty                   Allocate a pseudo-TTY
  -v, --volume strings        Bind mount a volume
  -w, --workdir string        Working directory inside the container

Usage

Usage:
  dockerbox [command]

Available Commands:
  help        Help about any command
  install     Install docker applet
  uninstall   Uninstall docker applet
  version