Building Docker Images

What are they used for?

Docker images are used for deployment to Kubernetes. Each of the main repo's (queue-processor, frontend, rest-api, and run-detection) all have Dockerfiles in a folder called 'container'. These Dockerfiles, when used, install everything required to run that package into a Docker Image. These images are stored on the GitHub container registry here.

How do you build an image?

There are two ways of building these images:

1. If you have the whole autoreduction suite checked out locally and Docker installed, you can go into the 'containers' repo folder where there is a Makefile containing the different 'make' commands that can be run. e.g. make rest-api. Be aware that these 'make' commands also push to GHCR too, so if you would like to just build and test the image locally, make sure you remove the 2 lines at the end of each section in the Makefile that mention push.
2. (Pushing for Production Only) There is a workflow_dispatch github workflow available on each of the main repos that can be run manually (Under the Actions tab of the repo, select the Docker CI job). Be warned, this pushes to the registry, and should only be used when making images for production.