Building Docker Containers for PDAL¶
PDAL’s repository is linked to DockerHub for automatic building of Docker containers. PDAL keeps three Docker containers current.
pdal/dependencies:latest
– PDAL’s dependenciespdal/pdal:latest
– PDAL masterpdal/pdal:1.5
– PDAL maintenance branch
Note
Containers are built upon the Dependences container, but the
Dependences container is not pinned to specific Xenial or PDAL release
times. It corresponds to where ever the dependencies
tag of
the PDAL source tree at https://github.com/PDAL/PDAL resides
Dependences¶
The PDAL dependencies Docker container is used by both the latest and release branch Docker containers. The dependencies container is also used during Continuous Integration testing by Travis. It is built using the Dockerfile at https://github.com/PDAL/PDAL/blob/master/scripts/docker/dependencies/Dockerfile
The pdal/dependencies:latest
image is regenerated by force-pushing a tag
of the SHA you wish to use to have DockerHub build.
git tag -f dependencies
git push origin refs/tags/dependencies -f
Note
The dependencies container is currently built upon Ubuntu Xenial. When the next Ubuntu LTS is released, the PDAL project will likely move to it.
Maintenance¶
A PDAL container corresponding to the last major release is automatically created
and maintained with every commit to the active release branch. For example, the
1.4-maintenance
branch will have a corresponding pdal/pdal:1.4
container
made with every commit on DockerHub. Users are encouraged to use these containers
for testing, bug confirmation, and deployment

Docker containers on maintenance branch correspond to major PDAL releases.
Latest (or master)¶
A PDAL container corresponding to a developer-selected release point is
made available at pdal/pdal:latest
and corresponds to the manual push
of a docker-master
tag by PDAL developers. This container is typically
used for testing and verification of fixes, and it is recommended that users
looking to depend on PDAL’s Docker containers always use known release
versions off of the last stable release branch.
Warning
You should be using the Maintenance Docker container for any production-oriented operations. Only use the latest one to test or prototype a latest, unreleased feature.

The pdal/pdal:latest
branch is current relative to the
docker-master
branch in GitHub.
$ git tag -f docker-master
$ git push origin refs/tags/docker-master -f