x11docker-gnome

A collection of Dockerfiles for building images with different versions of GNOME. These images can then be run with x11docker. Fedora images are used as a base, since versions of Fedora conveniently correspond to each stable version of GNOME.

Makefile allows building, pushing, pulling, and running of each image. (Running in this case is just invoking /bin/bash---for starting with x11docker, see run-gnome-shell.sh.)

The recommended workflow is as follows:

# Pull images from Docker Hub:
#   docker.io/jkitching/gnome-shell-XYZ
make pull gnome-shell-39 gnome-shell-40  # pull individual images
make pull all                            # pull all images

# Copy the run shell script template
cp run-gnome-shell.sh.template run-gnome-shell.sh
chmod +x run-gnome-shell.sh

# Make modifications as necessary
vim run-gnome-shell.sh

# Start GNOME container with x11docker
./run-gnome-shell.sh gnome-shell-39

For more details on how it all works, check out this blog post: GNOME development with x11docker containers.

Included packages

• gnome-terminal
• gnome-extensions-app (separate package from GNOME 3.36 onward)
• nautilus for file browsing
• xdg-user-dirs creates directories required for taking screenshots
• mesa-dri-drivers and mesa-libGL for GPU acceleration
• Xephyr for displaying GDM login screen
• xdotool and wmctrl for programmatically controlling X11
• iproute for ss tool used to query TCP and other sockets (e.g. find open ports)
• gnome-tour is removed, because we don't want a tour