How to dockerize a C++ application?

Welcome to the next pikoTutorial!

If you ever wanted to ensure a consistent environment for your application, you most probably know that containerization is the way to go. To containerize a C++ application, let's first setup a simple file structure:

cpp_docker
|- src
|  |- main.cpp
|- Dockerfile
|- CMakeLists.txt

Now add a simple main function:

#include <iostream>
#include <thread>
#include <chrono>

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    while (true) {
        std::cout << "Hello from the inside of the container" << std::endl;
        std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::seconds(1));
    }
}

And a simple CMakeLists.txt file:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.15)
project(CppDocker)
add_executable(${PROJECT_NAME})
target_sources(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/src/main.cpp)

Having this, it's time to write the Dockerfile:

# Use an official Ubuntu base image
FROM ubuntu:20.04
# Assure non-interactive mode of installers
ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive 
# Install dependencies
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    build-essential \
    cmake
# Copy necessary files
COPY ./src /app/src
COPY ./CMakeLists.txt /app
# Build the application
WORKDIR /app/build
RUN cmake ..
RUN cmake --build .
# Run the application
CMD ["./CppDocker"]

When the Dockerfile is ready, you can build a Docker image by running the following command:

docker build -t cpp_docker_image .

If you don't want to use sudo every time when calling docker command, you may want to change the permissions of one of the docker files by running sudo chmod 666 /var/run/docker.sock.

Note for beginners: remember that changing permissions of /var/run/docker.sock may have consequences related to security, so you want to think twice before you do this in the production environment!

After successful build, you can check the list of the images by running:

docker images

This will show you a table like the following:

REPOSITORY         TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED              SIZE
cpp_docker_image   latest    e132d245100b   About a minute ago   450MB

To create a container out of your image, use command:

docker run cpp_docker_image

This is the simplest form of this command, but most likely you would like to extend it with the following option and flags:

• --rm - removes container after it has been stopped
• --name - allows you to assign a custom name to your container (otherwise Docker will choose some random name)
• -d - detaches process from your current terminal what effectively makes the container to run in the background.

Eventually our command looks like this:

docker run --rm --name my_cpp_application -d cpp_docker_image

Now you can check the table of currently running containers with docker ps command. If everything went ok, you should see such output:

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE              COMMAND         CREATED          STATUS          PORTS     NAMES
a99c1e9e0bbc   cpp_docker_image   "./CppDocker"   12 seconds ago   Up 11 seconds             my_cpp_application

Finally, let's look at the logs from the application. Run docker logs my_cpp_application and check if you see the following output:

Hello from the inside of the container
Hello from the inside of the container
Hello from the inside of the container

If yes, you've just successfully containerized a C++ application.

Note for beginners: if you leave the container like this, it will run in the background forever. To stop the application, run docker container stop my_cpp_application command.
Note for advanced: if you need more in-depth look into your container, you can get inside the container's shell terminal using command docker container exec -it my_cpp_application /bin/bash. You can also do this at the container startup by using command docker run -it cpp_docker_image /bin/bash.