Using Docker Containers to build C++ Projects

With everyone moving to the docker bandwagon, why should you feel left behind. If you have your project hosted on BitBucket.org, make sure that you do make use of the pipeline feature to ensure that the project/product is always in the sane state.

Here is a sample bitbucket-pipelines.yml file to get you going with building C++ projects.

# This is a sample build configuration for C++ – Make.
# Check our guides at https://confluence.atlassian.com/x/5Q4SMw for more examples.
# Only use spaces to indent your .yml configuration.
# -----
# You can specify a custom docker image from Docker Hub as your build environment.
image: gcc:6.1

pipelines:
  default:
    - step:
        script: # Modify the commands below to build your repository.
          - make
          - make test

Well this is not going to be very useful if you use other libraries like boost, or qt in your project. Because the basic default image that BitBucket uses has tools like gcc, python, maven, npm, java etc(Read more about the image here). It does not back with it other third party libraries (like boost).

What do you do? You have the following options at hand for specifying the image:

1. the default image bitbucket provides(which is not very useful. Read here about the image), 
2. your own image from docker hub (public/private) 
3. specify am image hosted in private registry. (for detailed instruction read here)

Well for our little POC project where we were testing the feasibility of making use of Pipeline features we decided to use ilssim/cmake-boost-qt5  image.

CAUTION: Always check the DockerFile of the image when using someone else's image for security issues. Its always better to build your own image and host it on Docker hub and use it.

Coming back to my example, our POC project had reference to boost threading libraries, so here is my sample bitbucket-pipelines.yml file:

# This is a sample build configuration for C++ – Make.
# Check our guides at https://confluence.atlassian.com/x/5Q4SMw for more examples.
# Only use spaces to indent your .yml configuration.
# -----
# You can specify a custom docker image from Docker Hub as your build environment.
image: ilssim/cmake-boost-qt5

pipelines:
  default:
    - step:
        script:
          - echo "This script runs on all branches that don't have any specific pipeline assigned in 'branches'."
  branches:
    master:
      - step:
          script:
          - make
          - make test
    feature/*:
      - step:
          script:
          - cd orchestrationService
          - cmake
          - make

You can read more about branch workflows here.