I want to have an ACAP SDK image with a specific package

[pataxis]

I want to have an ACAP SDK image with a specific package, do I need to build my own SDK using the Dockerfiles in https://github.com/AxisCommunications/acap-native-sdk and installing the packages I want?

[pataxis]

No, it's enough to create a Dockerfile for your application that is based on a public ACAP SDK image and install the packages you want.

Example based on ACAP SDK image that installs build tools

An example is openssl_curl_example where build tools like automake and autoconf are installed to build OpenSSL and curl libraries which are then used in the ACAP application.

In the example Dockerfile we can see that it's based on an official ACAP SDK image, using FROM

ARG ARCH=armv7hf
ARG VERSION=1.2
ARG UBUNTU_VERSION=20.04
ARG REPO=axisecp
ARG SDK=acap-native-sdk

FROM ${REPO}/${SDK}:${VERSION}-${ARCH}-ubuntu${UBUNTU_VERSION} as sdk

Then additional build tools (required to build OpenSSL and curl libraries) are installed to the SDK container with apt-get

RUN apt-get update && \
    DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
    autoconf \
    libtool \
    automake && \
    apt-get clean && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

OpenSSL source code (to be cross-compiled and used in an ACAP application running on an Axis device) is retrieved with Ubuntu command-line curl

RUN curl -O https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-${OPENSSL_VER}.tar.gz && \
    tar xzvf openssl-${OPENSSL_VER}.tar.gz

The curl source code repo on GitHub (to be cross-compiled and used in an ACAP application running on an Axis device) is cloned with git clone

RUN git clone https://github.com/curl/curl.git --branch=curl-${CURL_VER} curl-${CURL_VER}

Then some intermediate steps are copying the libraries to the correct places to be used in the ACAP application build.

The final step is then building the ACAP application.

RUN . /opt/axis/acapsdk/environment-setup* && \
    acap-build . -a ${PEM_CERT_FILE}

Development loop

When you build the application image according to the example build instructions

docker build -t openssl_curl_example:armv7hf .

you will use Docker build cache. This way the OpenSSL and curl libraries will be built on the first run and in the second the cache will be used, i.e. no rebuild of the libraries.

The Docker build cache will however notice if your application source code files that are added with

COPY ./app .

have changed and the steps after, including the ACAP application build command will be rerun.