Container Native Environment (CNE)

Container Native Environment (CNE) is a tool for building and managing a virtual environment based on containers It provides users a reliable and reproducible environment for development and applications, such as machine learning or analytics.

Users can execute commands from the container transparently in the current directory using their default settings and configurations.

Quick Start

The following steps demonstrate how to quickly create a container-native environment, adding compiler and other build essentials to to that container and compiling 'hello world'.

Create a new CNE project

1. Create a directory for the project and change to it: mkdir my-project
cd my-project
2. Initialize the container-native project. This will create the cneproject file in the current directory that describes the project. We use Ubuntu for the base image: cne init --image ubuntu
3. You can now run a command insize the container environment:
   cne exec cat /etc/os-release
cne exec ls

All commands executed with cne exec run inside the container with the privileges of the current user and in the current directory.

Define the specific and reproducable environment

1. Create a new layer for managing the Apt packages: cne create layer -s apt
2. Add the development packages:
   cne install apt build-essential
3. Compile 'hello world':
   echo -e '#include <stdio.h>\nint main(void) { printf("Hello World!\\n"); }\n' > test.c
cne exec -- gcc -o test test.c
4. The executbale can now be run inside the container environment or outside (if compatible):
   cne exec test
./test

Define an alias to simplify the execution command

Having to always type cne exec -- before the command can be simplified with an alias to a single command. Using the alias defined below, you can use:

c ls -l

Instead of:

cne exec -- ls -l

Add this alias to your .profile or .bashrc:

alias c='cne exec -- '

The trailing space is an indication for bash to also check the command word following this alias for alias expansion. For example, c ll would expand the ll alias (if defined).

This can also be used to execute commands inside the container environment with root privileges by defining the alias:

alias sudo='sudo '

Using sudo c id will then display root as the current user.

Clean

The container environment will automatically be re-created if it has been destroyed. If you don't need the containers anymore or if there are any other issues, try to delete all resources associated witht the project:

cne clean project