TL;DR

Where we discuss of a quicker way of installing distribution-related packages with dibs.

When packaging stuff with dibs, I often stumble(d) in the following pattern with dibspack-basic:

• install pre-requisites;
• install suexec (see Command-line Docker Applications - A way forward for the reason why I include it in many container images).

The pre-requisites installation method via prereqs works fine and is very general - you basically provide scripts for managing pre-requisites - but most of the times it’s just installing modules with a specific package manager. So why not provide a shortcut consumable from the dibsfile?

Enter package, a set of three (as of now) wrappers for apk, apt-get and yum respectively, which also provide a shortcut to install suexec while we’re at it.

In particular, they accept as command-line options a list of packages to be installed. If the initial element(s) of the list is(/are) one of the three strings --suexec, --dockexec, or --profilexec, then the corresponding program from wrapexec will be installed. You can insist on passing one of these strings by tossing a --, which will interrupt the scanning.

Examples:

# ...
packs:
  basic:
    type: git
    origin: https://github.com/polettix/dibspack-basic.git

actions:

  whatever:
    - from: alpine:3.9

    # this installs packages gnuplot, ffmpeg, and su-exec in Alpine
    # Linux
    - pack: basic
      path: package/apk
      args:
        - gnuplot
        - ffmpeg
        - su-exec

    # this installs suexec from dibspack-basic and perl from Alpine
    # Linux
    - pack: basic
      path: package/apk
      args:
         - --suexec
         - perl

You get the idea… cheers!