nuest / rocker-win Goto Github PK

I wanted to learn more about Windows Containers and tried to create a Container with R. It worked! It's nowhere near the Rocker Images, but I hope the name rocker-win is fine with @cboettig and @eddelbuettel.

What works?

• Dockerfile based on microsoft/windowsservercore
• Automatic build on AppVeyor: https://ci.appveyor.com/project/nuest/rocker-win/history
• Deployment to Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/nuest/rocker-win/
• Running from Docker Hub works: docker run -it nuest/rocker-win

@StefanScherer your work at https://github.com/StefanScherer/dockerfiles-windows was a great help! Thanks!

If you have access to a recent Windows machine, I'd love to hear your feedback! But please don't ask me about a relevant use case for this just yet :-).

Travis supports windows now:

• https://blog.travis-ci.com/2018-10-11-windows-early-release
• https://docs.travis-ci.com/user/reference/windows

There are some issues with version compatibility, maybe

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowscontainers/deploy-containers/version-compatibility

helps.

this might simplify the Dockerfile:

https://github.com/krlmlr/r-appveyor/blob/master/scripts/appveyor-tool.ps1#L44-L112

thanks @jeroen for the pointer!

This might be the most realistic use case: an organisation is running Windows containers on a Server (and you cannot run Linux containers in Windows at the same time) and they want to run an R-based app accessible over HTTP.

• plumber (extra Dockerfile including plumber, then mount existing example scripts from the package)
• ~RStudio Server~~ (only for Linux)
• Shiny (extra Dockerfile installing Shiny and running an example app included in the package)

Is it possible to run RStudio? Probably only via sharing the X11-socket... does that work on Windows?

Is there an RStudio Server variant for Windows? 🤔

See installation steps at https://github.com/krlmlr/r-appveyor/blob/master/scripts/appveyor-tool.ps1#L120

Together with #6, the installation process could potentially stripped down to downloading the script from GH and running Bootstrap with the desired environment variables for configuration. But this greatly reduces self-containedness of the Dockerfile.

It's incredibly easy to install sf under Windows, if you come from Linux, because all binaries are packaged within! No system dependencies must be installed. Add a minimal Dockerfile to demonstrate that.

See branch nano

There are some issues with the required system libraries, it seems, because the Installation of R just quietly does nothing.

Nanoserverapiscan also does not help me so far, because I do not have a system32/Forwarders directory on my machine. Maybe I need to be on a Windows server... probably the R installer needs to be updated to work on nanoserver... or I must try to build R from source.

docker run -v "$(pwd):C:\scan" stefanscherer/nanoserverapiscan
Error: the file "C:\scan\GitKrakenSetup.exe" is not a valid 64 bit PE file.
Error: the file "C:\scan\R-3.4.3-win.exe" is not a valid 64 bit PE file.
Error: no reverse forwarders dll is found in "C:\scan". Please verify if reverse forwarders are properly deployed with this tool.

Resources

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/getting-started-with-nano-server
• https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/4d12df17-e803-4b12-ac82-6df99eb774cc/docker-on-windows-cannot-execute-exe-files-inisde-nanoserver-container-security-policies?forum=windowscontainers
• Microsoft-OneCore-ReverseForwarders-Package.cab - where can I get that?
  • https://www.petri.com/how-to-install-windows-server-2016-nano-in-a-vm
  • from the ISO at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2016/ ?
• https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/e08daebc-c298-4932-a9d7-ff08fabf9536/nano-server-packages?forum=NanoServer