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Building Apptainer containers interactivelly on Gitpod.

There is an experimental build with graphical interface and Apptainer running in Gitpod.
The free tier allows users to run about 50 hours on the standard configuration (4 cores, 8GB RAM, ~30GB storage).

Open on Gitpod

To start the session, click on the button above, follow the instructions to link your GitHub/GitLab etc. account, wait for the build and start the session.

  1. Select the default options for the "New Workspace" New Workspace
  2. Click on "Continue" and wait for the build - this might take some 10-15 minutes. Gitpod build
  3. The Workspace will open VScode interface with a preview of the graphical interface (2). You can use the terminal (1) to build in text or click in the top right corner to open the graphical interface in a separate tab in the browser. Workspace If you close the Workspace by accident, again on the button above, go to https://gitpod.io/workspaces and open the already build workspace.
    If you have closed by accident the graphical interface, from console (1) run 
    gp preview --external $(gp url 6080)
    Copy/paste from your computer to the graphical interface is a bit cumbersome copy/paste so, perhaps it is better to open Chrome from the "Applications/Internet/Google Chrome" menu and copy paste the material from there.
  4. To build a recipe run (you can use singularity as well - it will still run apptainer) 
    sudo apptainer build lolcow.sif lolcow.def
  5. Run as usually. Run

The Gitpod workspace runs Ubuntu 22.04 and you can:

  • install packages with sudo apt-get ...
  • install python modules with python3 -m pip install ... via pyenv. To get the newly installed modules and tools in the path you need to refresh with pyenv rehash after installation.

Files created in repository folder will be kept when the workspace is restarted - any other files will be lost.