Provide automated miniforge docker images

[yuvipanda]

First, love this project. I often end up installing miniconda, and then immediately creating a new env with conda-forge. Happy to see an alternative.

It would be very helpful if we can provide minimal miniforge docker images, similar to https://hub.docker.com/r/continuumio/miniconda3. Having it set up with conda-forge by default will make many lives easier.

We can keep it similar to the miniconda Dockerfile, although I'd like a few changes:

1. Pin the base image, rather than using debian:latest. This makes it impossible to know which debian version it is actually on, since that depends on what the latest version was when the image was built.
2. Use ubuntu as a base image, rather than debian. This is purely based on popularity in the community. However, this isn't a blocker. We can also easily make debian & ubuntu variants if folks need.
3. Leave $HOME clean, relying only on changes in /etc for profiles. $HOME is often mounted over with users' home directories, and this erases the changes made in $HOME/.bashrc. We could put it in /etc/profile.d instead for better effect.

This should be a completely automated process, and be built whenever a release is tagged. Providing just python3 images is probably good enough for now?

[scopatz]

Thanks @yuvipanda! I thought that the https://github.com/conda-forge/docker-images/blob/master/linux-anvil-comp7/Dockerfile is basically this/could be basically this. CC @isuruf @jakirkham

[hmaarrfk]

Conda is meant to be installed in the home directory. At least so I think.

How do you propose getting aroundthat?

[scopatz]

Conda doesn't need to be installed in the home directory. A lot of the docker images install it into /opt

[yuvipanda]

@scopatz something like that, but hopefully much more minimal - just tini and conda.

[scopatz]

I think we are very open to having something in this realm!

[yuvipanda]

@scopatz I have a PR ready at conda-forge/docker-images#129. I actually don't know if that is the right place for it - it might make more sense for it to live in this repo, so we can auto push images on tagging. What do you think?

[scopatz]

docker-images is probably the right place. We can always move it here, later if we decide

[jakirkham]

Anything else to do here or is this resolved with PR ( conda-forge/docker-images#129 )?

[yuvipanda]

@jakirkham not sure if it is getting auto tagged and pushed.

[jakirkham]

Did it get added to .travis.yml?

[jakirkham]

For context, @yuvipanda, adding a matrix case to .travis.yml should be all that is needed.

[maresb]

As an external observer, it wasn't clear to me at first glance whether or not a Dockerfile exists yet.

Answer: Yes it exists. Here is the Dockerfile. There also seems to be something on DockerHub which seems to be updated too frequently and only tagged with latest.

[isuruf]

There's a docker image now