Troubleshooting Dockerfile Builds with Checkpoint Containers

The scene

I recently ran into some problems compiling code while building a docker image using a Dockerfile. The compile process wasn't working, so the failed `make install` was stopping the container image from being built. There's 3 ways I could have approached troubleshooting this failed build. I used what I'm calling a "checkpoint container" to troubleshoot quickly and get back on track with the rest of the build process.

Dockerfile quick tour

Dockerfiles are an ordered list of instructions for the `docker build` process.

Webinar: Learn How Red Hat Supports the Three C’s of DevOps

Delivering apps quickly and on a budget is a common challenge for government IT.  But there is a path to developing and delivering apps faster – it’s one that uses the building blocks of PaaS and DevOps.

When using modern application platforms, such as Red Hat OpenShift 3, developers can forge an easier path to develop, deploy, and run applications. OpenShift has recently been retooled to support containers.

2015 Red Hat Government Symposium

Last November, the Red Hat Government Symposium brought together more than 500 government and industry IT professionals to discuss open source software’s role in addressing key government IT challenges. The event focused on strategies to advance innovation, as well as the benefits of deploying flexible, agile, collaborative, and cost-effective open source solutions within the Public Sector.

Federal and industry leaders presented keynotes, demonstrations and panels on key topics including:

Improving the Software Development Process with GitHub

As a Solutions Engineer at GitHub working with government customers, I speak to a lot of organizations looking to improve their software development process. They recognize GitHub as the most popular code repository and sharing environment in the world - where more than 11 million developers worldwide discover, fork, and contribute to over 29 million projects. Some of these agencies are already hosting their own projects on the site.

Bringing Open Source Workflows to the Enterprise

Open source has changed the way we build software. A fully distributed team of strangers, rarely working on the same thing at the same time or in the same place at the same time, yet open source projects consistently produce better software than their closed-source and proprietary counterparts. How then, can this reimagined software development workflow be leveraged by the enterprise to produce more modern software, even if that software ultimately remains closed source?

PaaS is Evolving with Red Hat’s New OpenShift Enterprise 3

Red Hat recently announced the general availability of OpenShift Enterprise 3 (OSE3), the next-generation of Red Hat's award-winning Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering. OSE3 is the first enterprise-ready web-scale container application platform based on Docker format Linux containers, Kubernetes orchestration and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to provide full support from the operating system to application runtimes. OSE3 helps organizations accelerate application development and delivery by enabling development and operations teams to be more agile, responsive, and efficient.

How To Convert From JSON to YAML With Ease

I am not going to go into the holy war of the JSON vs YAML discussion. That is something that should be left to folks that have time and willingness to discuss this, just like discussions of OS X vs Windows vs Linux, or VMware vs Xen, or iOS vs Android, or …the list could continue way past this blog. But this blog is not to discuss either/or. It is to show you a way to convert from one to another to ease the pain of dealing with one or the other side. Let’s take a simple JSON template for DynamoDB table creation in AWS.