README.md

Dockerfiles for building RDKit.

These images supersede the existing informaticsmatters/rdkit_* Docker images.

These Dockerfiles and shell scripts are for building various Docker images for RDKit. The aim is to build a number of lightweight images that are suited for running in production cloud environments like Kubernetes and OpenShift. For this purpose the images need to be:

1. as small as is reasonable to minimise download time and reduce the potential attack surface
2. run as a non-root user or an arbitrarily assigned user ID.

The approach taken to build these images currently follows the builder pattern. See the Smaller containers series of posts on the Informatics Matters blog for more details about how these images are built.

For each RDKit version (image tag) we build a number of images:

• informaticsmatters/rdkit-python3-debian - a Debian based distribution designed for running RDKit from Python 3. These images start from the Release_2019_03 release.
• informaticsmatters/rdkit-java-debian - a Debian based distribution designed for running RDKit from Java.
• informaticsmatters/rdkit-tomcat-debian - a Debian based distribution designed for running a servlet in Apache Tomcat that uses the RDKit Java bindings. You need to provide the war file with the web application.
• informaticsmatters/rdkit-cartridge-debian - a Debian based distribution with PostgreSQL and the RDKit cartridge. Note that we were unable to build cartridge images for the 2021_09 and 2022_03 based releases.

Note: we now focus on the Debian based images. In the past we also built on centos and fedora, but this caused too much of a maintenance problem.

Branches

• master - build from current RDKit master branch. These images are updated at irregular intervals. Images have tag of latest.
• Release_2017_09_2 - build from RDKit Release_2017_09_2 branch. These are not working correctly yet and may be dropped.
• Release_2018_03 - build from RDKit Release_2018_03 branch and occasionally rebuilt as the code gets updated. Images have tag of Release_2018_03
• Release_2018_03_1 - build from RDKit Release_2018_03_1 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2018_03_1 [2]
• Release_2018_03_2 - build from RDKit Release_2018_03_2 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2018_03_2.
• Release_2018_09 - build from RDKit Release_2018_09 branch and occasionally rebuilt as the code gets updated. Images have tag of Release_2018_09
• Release_2018_09_1 - build from RDKit Release_2018_09_1 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2018_09_1
• Release_2018_09_2 - build from RDKit Release_2018_09_2 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2018_09_2
• Release_2018_09_3 - build from RDKit Release_2018_09_3 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2018_09_3
• Release_2019_03 - build from RDKit Release_2019_03 branch and occasionally rebuilt as the code gets updated. Images have tag of Release_2019_03
• Release_2019_03_1 - build from RDKit Release_2019_03_1 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2019_03_1
• Release_2019_03_2 - build from RDKit Release_2019_03_2 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2019_03_2
• Release_2019_03_3 - build from RDKit Release_2019_03_3 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2019_03_3
• Release_2019_03_4 - build from RDKit Release_2019_03_4 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2019_03_4
• Release_2019_09 - build from RDKit Release_2019_09 branch and occasionally rebuilt as the code gets updated. Images have tag of Release_2019_09
• Release_2019_09_1 - build from RDKit Release_2019_09_1 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2019_09_1
• Release_2019_09_2 - build from RDKit Release_2019_09_2 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2019_09_2
• Release_2020_03 - build from RDKit Release_2020_03 branch and occasionally rebuilt as the code gets updated. Images have tag of Release_2020_03
• Release_2020_03_1 - build from RDKit Release_2020_03_1 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2020_03_1
• Release_2020_03_2 - build from RDKit Release_2020_03_2 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2020_03_2
• Release_2020_03_3 - build from RDKit Release_2020_03_3 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2020_03_3
• Release_2020_03_4 - build from RDKit Release_2020_03_4 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2020_03_4
• Release_2020_03_5 - build from RDKit Release_2020_03_5 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2020_03_5
• Release_2020_03_6 - build from RDKit Release_2020_03_6 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2020_03_6
• Release_2020_09 - build from RDKit Release_2020_09 branch and occasionally rebuilt as the code gets updated. Images have tag of Release_2020_09
• Release_2020_09_1 - build from RDKit Release_2020_09_1 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2020_09_1
• Release_2020_09_2 - build from RDKit Release_2020_09_2 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2020_09_2
• Release_2020_09_3 - build from RDKit Release_2020_09_3 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2020_09_3
• Release_2020_09_4 - build from RDKit Release_2020_09_4 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2020_09_4
• Release_2020_09_5 - build from RDKit Release_2020_09_5 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2020_09_5
• Release_2021_03 - build from RDKit Release_2021_03 branch and occasionally rebuilt as the code gets updated. Images have tag of Release_2021_03
• Release_2021_03_1 - build from RDKit Release_2021_03_1 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2021_03_1
• Release_2021_03_2 - build from RDKit Release_2021_03_2 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2021_03_2
• Release_2021_09 - build from RDKit Release_2021_09 branch and occasionally rebuilt as the code gets updated. Images have tag of Release_2021_09
• Release_2022_03 - build from RDKit Release_2022_03 branch and occasionally rebuilt as the code gets updated. Images have tag of Release_2022_03
• Release_2022_03_5 - build from RDKit Release_2021_03_5 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2022_03_5
• Release_2022_09 - build from RDKit Release_2022_09 branch and occasionally rebuilt as the code gets updated. Images have tag of Release_2022_09
• Release_2022_09_4 - build from RDKit Release_2021_09_4 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2022_09_4
• Release_2022_09_5 - build from RDKit Release_2021_09_5 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2022_09_5
• Release_2023_03 - build from RDKit Release_2023_03 branch and occasionally rebuilt as the code gets updated. Images have tag of Release_2023_03
• Release_2023_03_1 - build from RDKit Release_2023_03_1 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2023_03_1
• Release_2023_03_2 - build from RDKit Release_2023_03_2 release tag. These images should never change [1]. Images have tag of Release_2023_03_2

[1] Where we say that the images should never change what we really mean in that the RDKit content should never change. We may rebuild these images occasionally when we find further improvements, and the underlying Debian packages may be updated, but the RDKit code should be exactly the same.

[2] These images were originally tagged as Release_2018_03_01 (2 digits as the final number). For better consistency with the RDKit GitHub tag names we switched to using a single digit format. Tags with two digits are also present for backward compatibility and point to the equivalent single digit image. Please use the single digit format.

GitHub repo for RDKit is here. GitHub repo for this project is here

To create images for a new version of RDKit you should only need to create a new branch from the corresponding previous version and then edit params.sh.

Build and run

Since October 2023 we have switched to a multi-stage build and are building images for amd64 and arm64 architectures. Thanks to @nmunro and @artran for assistance with building on arm64. These arm64 images should be treated as experimental. Please report any issue you may find.

You need to use the buildx extensions to build these images. The Dockerfile-debian is the multi-stage Dockerfile that builds all the images, and it is run by executing build-debian.sh, which is parameterised through the contents of params.sh. To be able to run this you probably will need to enable buildx using a command like this: docker buildx create --use.

The build stage builds RDKit form the appropriate GitHub branch for RDKit, and creates the deb packages and the Java artifacts from it for use in the python, java, tomcat and cartridge stages. Each subsequent stage is run separately and the images pushed to dockerhub. Note: only the amd64 is currently built for the tomcat image.

Run the Python image like this:

docker run -it --rm informaticsmatters/rdkit-python3-debian:<tag_name> python

Run the Java image like this:

docker run -it --rm informaticsmatters/rdkit-java-debian:<tag_name> bash

The CLASSPATH environment variable is already defined to include the RDKit library. You'll need to add your own classes and/or libraries to the CLASSPATH. To do a simple test with the java image using simple Java classes that can be found in the java_src directory first compile the classes like this:

$ docker run -it --rm -v $PWD/java_src:/example:Z informaticsmatters/rdkit-build-debian:<tag_name> sh -c 'cd /example && ./compile.sh'

Then run like this:

$ docker run -it --rm -v $PWD/java_src:/example:Z informaticsmatters/rdkit-java-debian:<tag_name> sh -c 'cd /example && ./run.sh'
RDKit version: 2020.09.3
Read smiles: c1ccccc1 Number of atoms: 6
RDKit version: 2020.09.3
Mol: org.RDKit.RWMol@5b2133b1
RDKit version: 2020.09.3
MorganFP: 4294967295

Javadocs are built into /rdkit/Code/JavaWrappers/gmwrapper/doc. Since the 2019_09 release a javadocs.tgz file is created in the artifacts/debian/<tag>/java/ directory.

RDBASE environment variable

In old versions of the images the RDBASE environment variable was set incorrectly which would impact functions where RDKit needs to read its internal data files. Since the 2020_03, 2019_09 and 2019_09_3 images this should be correctly set, but older images will suffer this problem and to fix it you must define the RDBASE environment variable when you run the container and set it to a value of /usr/share/RDKit. e.g. docker run -it -e RDBASE=/usr/share/RDKit ...

Python 3

Starting with the Release_2019_03 release RDKit only supports Python 3. We have been building Python 3 versions on the master/latest branch and for the 2019_03 versions onwards.

Java

Most images are built with Java 8. In early 2019 the Debian Buster repositories changed so that Java 11 was present and Java 8 was no longer available (and could not easily be added). Thus Debian images from 2019 onwards are built with Java 11.

RDKit cartridge

We have now started to handle the RDKit postgres cartridge in a debian environment as a series of informaticsmatters/rdkit-cartridge-debian images. This started with the Release_2018_09 images.

If you want to use the cartridge in the informaticsmatters/rdkit-cartridge-debian:latest image then try something like this:

# start the container
$ docker run -d --name rdkitcartridge informaticsmatters/rdkit-cartridge-debian:latest

# connect to the container
$ docker exec -it -u postgres rdkitcartridge bash
# run psql and create a database
postgres@db485abc2f02:/rdkit$ psql 
psql (10.4 (Debian 10.4-2))
Type "help" for help.

postgres=# create database rdkit;
CREATE DATABASE
postgres=# \q
# connect again to that database and install the cartridge
postgres@db485abc2f02:/rdkit$ psql -d rdkit
psql (10.4 (Debian 10.4-2))
Type "help" for help.

rdkit=# CREATE EXTENSION rdkit;
CREATE EXTENSION
rdkit=# \q

Notes:

1. You must initially connect to the database as the postgres user, hence the need for the -u postgres option for the docker exec command.

Hopefully coming soon

• Tests for built images.

Requests also welcome!