cs50/ide

CS50 IDE's Docker configuration for Cloud9

Since Docker containers are built incrementally, building an offline container requires first creating an underlying workspace image, then building an ide50 image on top of that, and then finally creating the ide50-offline image on top. There are some make commands to simplify this process.

Making changes to offline:

The primary way to make changes to the offline workspace is to add things (required packages, scripting various installation steps, etc) to the ide50 Debian package which is also used for the online version of the IDE. The build process below builds an offline IDE based on the publicly-accessible IDE50 package on mirror.cs50.net.

Testing offline changes:

First build an offline workspace from scratch using the "To build all from scratch" steps below.

Next, make changes to the ide50 Debian package, build it, and follow the directions on that repo to locally install the deb on the offline workspace (also be sure to test it on an online workspace!) you generated above.

If all goes well, publish the deb to the mirror and build the offline workspace from scratch, once there has been sufficient time for all mirrors to receive the new deb.

To build all from scratch:

1. Install Docker Engine.
2. Open a terminal window.
3. Execute cd /path/to/ide50-docker.
4. Execute make build and wait. This builds all images sequentially.
5. Start the built offline container with make run.
6. (Mac OS X only) Execute make open to automatically open a tab in your favorite browser that loads the offline IDE.

Rebuild after making changes

1. Stop the running offline container with make stop
2. Delete offline image with make clean
3. Re-build offline (only) with make offline

Rebuilding from an earlier version (say, if you need to build a new ide50 container with a new version of the ide50 deb) will require rebuilding from that container. It's probably easiest to delete all images and then run make build.

Deploying a new offline image

We generally deploy a new offline version when a new version of the ide50 deb is released. This way, people that download the offline version are sure to have the very latest.

Preparation

1. Clean all existing images and containers. Building from scratch is generally preferred since it ensures the latest version of Ubuntu and other packages. Use docker ps -a to see a full list of docker containers, stopping any relevant ones if necessary, and remove them with docker rm. Use docker images to see a list of images, and use docker rmi to delete those images. I usually delete all images that are associated with the offline IDE to be sure to build from scratch.
2. Run make build to build from scratch.
3. Run the offline with make run to ensure the latest deb was installed and all changes are as they appear.

Deployment

If all looks good after a successful complete build, begin the actual deployment steps:

1. Run make squash to squash the docker image into as small of a size as possible. Note: docker squash tools tend to change rapidly, so you may need to update the squash rule in the Makefile periodically, or update the copy of the docker-squash.
2. Once that's done, apply both "beta" and "latest" tags to the build version. "Beta" builds are at least as new as the "latest", but sometimes its useful to release just a "beta" build with features that others test:

docker tag ide50-offline cs50/ide50-offline:beta
docker tag ide50-offline cs50/ide50-offline:latest

3. Push the tags to Docker hub:

docker push cs50/ide50-offline:beta
docker push cs50/ide50-offline:latest

Command list

There are a variety of commands in make to help re-build an image.

• make build Builds the wkspc image, then the ide image, then the offline image.
• Build individual images with make wkspc, make ide, and make offline, respectively.
• make run runs an already-built offline container
• make stop then stops that running container
• make open (Mac OS X only, probably) opens the offline IDE in your browser.
• make shell to open a shell in the running container
• make clean removes the offline image and container only

To install for cloud9:

1. Change line 1 of ide50/Dockerfile to FROM cloud9/workspace
2. Zip ide50 (zip -r ide50 ide50).
3. Email to Nikolai Onken, nikolai@c9.io

HOWTOs

Re-build SDK

After making changes to CSS (e.g., in /var/c9sdk/plugins/*) or config files (e.g., /var/c9sdk/configs/ide/workspace-cs50.js):

cd /path/to/ide50-docker
make shell
/var/c9sdk/scripts/install-sdk.sh
exit
make restart

Troubleshooting

Error checking TLS connection: Error checking and/or regenerating the certs

docker-machine regenerate-certs default

If something still seems awry with Docker, odds are the below will help. The below will delete and recreate the virtual machine used by Docker.

docker-machine stop default
docker-machine rm default
docker-machine create --driver virtualbox default
eval $(docker-machine env default)