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I'm creating a base image for my projects. In this base image, I will download a few .tar.gzs and extract them.

I want to add these unzipped directories to be added to the path, so in child images, I can call up the downloaded executables directly without needing to specify the full path.

I tried running export PATH... in the base image, but that doesn't seem to work (at least when i tty into it, i don't see the path updated, I assume because the export doesn't transfer over into the new bash session).

Any other way to do this? Should I edit the .bashrc?

Ali
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2 Answers2

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If you are trying to set some environment variables you can use the -e option to set environment variables. for example suppose you can do

docker run -e PASSWORD=Cookies -it <image name> bash

which when run you can check to see if $PASSWORD exists with an echo $PASSWORD

Mike Tung
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  • I want to set the path in the Dockerfile of the original image, so I can just run the children and they will have inherited the path from parent and I will not have to specify it myself each time – Ali Sep 11 '16 at 23:48
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Currently the way you are setting $PATH will not cause the modification to be persistent across sessions. Please see the Bash manual on startup files to see which files you can edit to set the environment permanently,

Jonathan Leffler
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Hiren
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  • What's the way to do it so it will persist? – Ali Sep 11 '16 at 23:48
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    In your Dockerfile, try omitting the square brackets from the command specified for the executable, as shown here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27158840/docker-executable-file-not-found-in-path – Hiren Sep 11 '16 at 23:54
  • Thanks, this works as a workaround, but this will probably have issues, e.g if my program crashes, it will probably exit to bash, and docker won't know that the program has crashed – Ali Sep 12 '16 at 00:47