Verify that the Docker container images actually work

[Rangi42]

Since 0.7.0 we've provided a Dockerfile to build RGBDS, and since 0.9.0 we've build images automatically with each new release. However, I'm not sure they actually work.

I opened zladx/LADX-Disassembly#601 to use RGBDS 0.9.2 and its new STRCHAR function when building LADX-Disassembly, replacing their kemenaran/rgbds:0.8.0 Docker image with our ghcr.io/gbdev/rgbds:v0.9.2. This successfully started a CircleCI build job.

The "Spin up environment" step did correctly use our image given that path:

[...]
Starting container ghcr.io/gbdev/rgbds:v0.9.2
  image cache not found on this host, downloading ghcr.io/gbdev/rgbds:v0.9.2
[...]
ghcr.io/gbdev/rgbds:v0.9.2:
  using image ghcr.io/gbdev/rgbds@sha256:ce92d764841ee057dea1a505005c40d8359e0d8d05b54ed45be431ac78cfc011
  pull stats: download 123.6MiB in 7.905s (15.64MiB/s)
  time to create container: 622ms
[...]

But the "Building" step failed:

% #!/bin/bash -eo pipefail
% make build-all
tools/gfx/gfx.py --invert --interleave --out revisions/J0/src/gfx/characters/oam_npc_3.cgb.2bpp 2bpp revisions/J0/src/gfx/characters/oam_npc_3.cgb.png
tools/gfx/gfx.py --invert --interleave --out revisions/J0/src/gfx/characters/oam_npc_3.dmg.2bpp 2bpp revisions/J0/src/gfx/characters/oam_npc_3.dmg.png
rgbgfx -o revisions/J0/src/gfx/ending/thanks_for_playing.2bpp revisions/J0/src/gfx/ending/thanks_for_playing.png
make: rgbgfx: No such file or directory
make: *** [Makefile:60: revisions/J0/src/gfx/ending/thanks_for_playing.2bpp] Error 127

Exited with code exit status 2

This could be due to some difference between kemenaran/rgbds and ghcr.io/gbdev/rgbds, but I'm not sure what -- shouldn't the container image be putting already-built rgb{gfx,asm,link,fix} in the PATH?

@avivace I'd appreciate your help with this. Would you be able to demonstrate for me how our Docker image is meant to be used with projects? If there's some catch to it like "the executables are actually inside an rgbds/ directory" (no idea, just guessing), we may want to fix that or at least explain it somewhere?

[avivace]

I can take a look later today but in principle this is what the image is doing after the compilation:

tar caf rgbds-linux-x86_64.tar.xz --transform='s#.*/##' rgbasm rgblink rgbfix rgbgfx man/* .github/scripts/install.sh

which in turn should:

install -s -m 755 rgbasm rgblink rgbfix rgbgfx /usr/local/bin/

So my hypothesis is that /usr/local/bin may not be in the PATH, by default in debian:12-slim images (the base of our rgbds image)?

[Rangi42]

Isn't that command including .github/scripts/install.sh as one of the files in the tar archive? Not running it?

[avivace]

Could you retry now @Rangi42 ?

[avivace]

You would first need to verify that the dockerimage tagged "master" is fixed, then maybe we can release a 0.9.2b just for the container? Or I can "overwrite" 0.9.2 (but it'll have the commits up to 41c94aa). Or, you can modify the PR to point to master for now, then once we release 0.9.3 it can be changed back to point to a specific version..

[Rangi42]

Yes, the rgbds:master image works correctly.

However, I'd rather just wait until 0.9.3 is released and PR LADX then. There's no hurry to use the STRCHAR function in it.

Alternatively, we could release an "0.9.3" with just these few fixes/changes. It would also be an opportunity to merge gbdev/rgbds-www#78 and make sure our new release filenames aren't breaking anyone's workflow. And then we'd shift 0.9.3 -> 0.9.4 and 0.9.4 -> 0.9.5 for new features.

[Rangi42]

(Currently we have so few changes that I don't think it's worth a new release. Although if you review #1687 and maybe help add a couple things from https://github.com/gbdev/rgbds/milestone/20, it could be enough to deserve an 0.9.3 label.)

[avivace]

Ok, if it works I'd say we close this. Let's wait normally for the next release to have a working version-tagged docker image, since master is a valid alternative and can be used for the time being.

Sorry I don't have any bandwidth during this period (and gbcompo25 efforts will ramp up soon as well) to dedicate to rgbds to push a 0.9.3 :/