Using rdlang in Docker

I've created a Docker image for use with rdlang. There were two reasons for doing so:

• It works on Windows and OS X. I've tried to get rdlang working on Windows, but with my lack of knowledge of Windows development and a busy teaching schedule, it will be a long time before that happens. Even if I do get it working, the setup on Windows is likely to be complicated.
• Even on Linux, the setup is nontrivial, so Docker may be a better way to try it out.

Step 1: Install Docker

Installation more or less means downloading and running the proper installer. Choose your OS:

Windows
OS X
Linux

Step 2: Pull or build the image

You can pull the image in the usual way:

docker pull bachmeil/rdlang

If instead you want to build the image yourself, which will be the case if you want to customize it, you can download the Dockerfile here. From the Docker terminal, in the directory where you downloaded Dockerfile, type

docker build -t rdlang .

That will create an image with the name "rdlang".

Step 3: Run the image

It is assumed that you have a directory on your host machine to hold any files you want to access from the Docker image (that includes your D programs, data files, R scripts, etc.) Let's assume you are on Windows, and want C:\Users\user1\dockershare to be available to Docker. You would run the following inside the Docker terminal:

docker run --rm -ti -u docker -v //c/Users/user1/dockershare:/home/docker -w /home/docker rdlang

If instead you were on Linux and wanted to make directory ~/dockershare available to the Docker image, you'd run

docker run --rm -ti -u docker -v ~/dockershare:/home/docker -w /home/docker rdlang

Use rdlang

You should now have rdlang installed and running properly. To see how to use rdlang, you can check out this example.