Simple lightweight container to run Ubuntu's id3tool without having to install Ubuntu.

This uses minideb and the latest id3tool at the time of publication (v1.2a-11).

Note: I haven't explored buildx yet as a multi-arch solution.

This project is now on Docker Hub under the same name (mikeoertli/id3tool)! Instead of needing to clone this repo and build, you can just pull down the pre-built images and run with those.

The docker pull command is:

docker pull mikeoertli/id3tool

This tool is part of Ubuntu.

The ARM binary is retrieved from this launchpad.net resource.

The AMD binary is retrieved from this launchpad.net resource.

The id3tool version number is kept in id3tool-version.txt so this build command doesn't need to change.

However, the Dockerfile is currently manually kept in sync with the txt file.

Building ARM:

docker build --platform linux/arm64 -t mikeoertli/id3tool:"$(cat id3tool-version.txt)-arm64" -t mikeoertli/id3tool:latest-arm64 .

Building AMD:

docker build --platform linux/amd64 -t mikeoertli/id3tool:"$(cat id3tool-version.txt)-amd64" -t mikeoertli/id3tool:latest-amd64 -f Dockerfile.amd64 .

These images are published to Docker Hub under mikeoertli/id3tool.

Right now, GitHub actions only support amd64 architecture, so for now, those are the only images that are build and published automatically.

Images for arm64 architecture must be pushed manually, the command to do that is:

docker push mikeoertli/id3tool:"$(cat id3tool-version.txt)"-arm64

Images for amd64 architecture are pushed when tagging the repo with a tag matching the format of v*.*-*.

In addition to automatic publication via GitHub Actions, repos can also be pushed manually, the command to do that is:

docker push mikeoertli/id3tool:"$(cat id3tool-version.txt)"-amd64

There are a couple important items to note:

1. You will need to provide a file name.
2. As shown below, a Docker Volume is created that maps the current working directory on the host machine to /temp inside the container.
3. The WORKDIR is /temp, since this is where files are expected, a relative file reference is fine.

docker run -it --name id3tool --rm -v $(pwd):/temp mikeoertli/id3tool:latest-arm64 <switches> "<FILE>"

You can still pass command line args, for example, if you want to print the help guide, you can do that with -h or --help just like you normally would (or you can omit all args and options and the default is to display the --help output).

docker run -it --name id3tool --rm -v $(pwd):/temp mikeoertli/id3tool:latest-arm64 --help

More useful info about options for id3tool can be found via ubuntu.com.

The --rm on the run command will auto-delete the container when it stops (you can read more about this here). This makes it easier to use this containerized id3tool solution in a way more similar to running it natively (this can be helpful when called from a script, too).

The container sets a CMD value of --help, this serves as the default parameter if none is provided when the container is run. According to the Dockerfile Best Practices:

The best use for ENTRYPOINT is to set the image’s main command, allowing that image to be run as though it was that command (and then use CMD as the default flags).

To put it differently, if you don't pass an audio file argument to the docker run command, you're effectively performing the equivalent of executing id3tool --help from a native command line.

In order to make this (appear to be) a "true" drop-in replacement for running id3tool natively, you could define an alias... something like this:

alias id3tool='docker run -it --name id3tool --rm -v $(pwd):/temp mikeoertli/id3tool:latest-arm64'