Update§
This old post is outdated and requires a small update. To run an executable from another container (here we use distrobox, a frontend for podman or docker), you just need to run this command inside the desired container where you want to run the executable.
sudo ln /usr/bin/distrobox-host-exec /usr/local/bin/my-executable
Make sure that the my-executable was already distrobox-exported to the host.
Old post§
To anyone that might have asked themselves
How do I call an executable from Y distro to the current X distro I am using in distrobox?
The answer is to create a script. But first you will have to use distrobox-host-exec. Create a symlink inside your distrobox. You can either declare
an init-hook or do it manually. The command is
ln -sf distrobox-host-exec /usr/local/bin/podman
This will create a pseudo podman executable that will run the host system's podman, assuming you have that installed in your host system.
To check if it works, run
podman ps
This will give you a list of available containers that are active.
Example situation§
So let's assume you are in a weird situation. You want to use zig but the one on openSUSE Tumbleweed distrobox is 0.10.0 because it has an issue with glibc versions. But it builds correctly on openSUSE Leap 15.5! The next thing you did was to create your leap distrobox
distrobox-create -i leap:latest -n leap
And then you ran the following command inside your leap distrobox
sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:tools:compiler/15.5/devel:tools:compiler.repo
sudo zypper refresh
sudo zypper install zig
So uh... how do I use zig from leap when I am in a tumbleweed distrobox?
By using distrobox-host-exec which calls your podman executable! Remember the symlink? Here is the idea
podman has an exec command. Running podman exec --help gives you the following output:
Run a process in a running container
Description:
Execute the specified command inside a running container.
Usage:
podman exec [options] CONTAINER [COMMAND [ARG...]]
Examples:
podman exec -it ctrID ls
podman exec -it -w /tmp myCtr pwd
podman exec --user root ctrID ls
Options:
-d, --detach Run the exec session in detached mode (backgrounded)
--detach-keys string Select the key sequence for detaching a container. Format is a single character [a-Z] or ctrl-<value> where <value> is one of: a-z, @, ^, [, , or _ (default "ctrl-p,ctrl-q")
-e, --env stringArray Set environment variables
--env-file strings Read in a file of environment variables
-i, --interactive Keep STDIN open even if not attached
-l, --latest Act on the latest container podman is aware of
Not supported with the "--remote" flag
--preserve-fds uint Pass N additional file descriptors to the container
--privileged Give the process extended Linux capabilities inside the container. The default is false
-t, --tty Allocate a pseudo-TTY. The default is false
-u, --user string Sets the username or UID used and optionally the groupname or GID for the specified command
-w, --workdir string Working directory inside the container
Since it says here that we can run a process from a running container, we can create a script to run zig in your tumbleweed distrobox!
#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/podman exec --user $USER -it -w $PWD leap zig $@
And save it to /usr/local/bin/zig and run sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/zig.
Testing your zig executable§
Inside your tumbleweed distrobox which now contains your pseudo zig executable, you can test if it works by doing the commands
md hello-zig/
cd $_
zig init-exe
zig build
./zig-out/hello-zig
The last command should output
All your codebase are belong to us.
Run `zig build test` to run the tests.
How it works§
We have distrobox-host-exec (which calls host-spawn in the background), and podman. By using distrobox-host-exec to
run the host system podman, we can also check other running containers, not just from leap distrobox in the previous examples.
With podman, we can use its exec command to run executables from other containers. The important flags are
-wor--workdir. This is where you set$PWD-ior--interactive. This allows interactivity-tor--tty. This will allow it to work somewhat okay-ish in a terminal.
Plus $@ to add possible other subcommands of an executable e.g. build, test, --help.
The --user is set to $USER so it respects your user inside the container. Otherwise, it will become root which
maybe is not what you want.
So the final and cool command for the pseudo zig executable is:
#!/bin/bash
# leap can be anything: container ID or container NAME
/usr/local/bin/podman exec --user $USER -it -w $PWD leap zig $@
More information§
You can find more information from the following links: