Added Dockerfile V1

[davidcb98]

Good morning.

A few days ago I opened an issue due to a compilation problem in a cluster where I could not install the dependencies with apt-get.

Due to this problem I thought to make a docker container and compile inside the toolchain. I think it is interesting to add it to the repository and update it with the versions.

I think it would be interesting that when a new release of the toolchain is released, a container is left in DockerHub with the compiled toolchain.

To test it I compiled it with the options:

./configure --prefix=/opt/riscv --with-arch=rv64gc --with-abi=lp64d

Since different architectures and ABIs are supported, maybe an option to make the container more generic is to compile for several architectures and ABIs using “--with-multilib-generator=”. (I didn't test this option, but I think that's what it refers to).

To build the image, just have docker installed and run in the directory where the Dockerfile is the command:

docker build -t riscv-gnu-toolchain:2025.01.20_rv64gc_lp64d .

where before the colon (riscv-gnu-toolchain) is the name of the image and after (2025.01.20_rv64gc_lp64d) is the tag of the image.

Once you have the image, you only have to lift the container with the command

docker run --name riscv-gnu-toolchain -id riscv-gnu-toolchain:2025.01.20_rv64gc_lp64d bash

and run:

docker exec riscv64-unknown-linux-gnu-gcc -v

To run in HPC environment (clusters), you have to convert the image to singularity.

I look forward to your comments,
David

[cmuellner]

Hi @davidcb98,

Thanks for the PR!
The PR raises three questions for me:

• Do we want to keep a Dockerfile, when we are not adding that to the CI (it will bitrot, because nobody will bump the base image)
• What's the added value of a Dockerfile over the build.yaml
• Which configuration would the Dockerfile cover (base OS, libc, baremetal/linux, simulator)?

I don't think a Dockerfile is bad, but if we have one, we should probably consider deploying the container to a registry. I'm happy to support this use case if there is demand from the user-side for it.

[davidcb98]

Good morning,

First of all, thank you for your reply.

I am not an expert in software development so there are some issues that escape me. For example, I am not clear how Github Actions works and what is the build.yaml.

Also, I don't quite understand the first question, and about the third one, in the Dockerfile you can see that the image I chose was an ubuntu, although there are lighter alternatives. It's a first approximation to encourage you to give the subject a try.

I can tell you about a problem that I think that having a set of Docker images published on DockerHub can solve. I am a system administrator on a supercomputer (HPC) dedicated to scientific computing at the University of Malaga. In this kind of infrastructures we try to install all the software in a self-contained way. That is to say, the system has pre-installed a series of libraries and any dependency that needs a software has to be installed manually (without using apt-get).

This creates quite a few problems when installing software, as you have to fight with dependencies. When an installation gets complicated, the best thing to do is to install a Singularity image (which is obtained from the Docker image, as Docker is not used in HPC).

This is why I think that having a repository on DockerHub can make life much easier for system administrators.

Thank you very much,
David