Docker

Packaging a program together with its runtime environment into a container that runs the same way on any machine.

Docker is a container platform from Docker, Inc., open-sourced in 2013. It packages a program together with its system libraries, dependencies, and configuration into an “image”; running that image produces a “container,” which shares the host machine’s kernel and is therefore much lighter weight than a virtual machine. An image is described by a Dockerfile script, and can be pushed to a registry for others to pull. Robotics development frequently runs into problems like a ROS version being tied to a specific Ubuntu version, or a simulator with complicated dependencies; Docker lets different environments run side by side on the same machine, and paired with the NVIDIA Container Toolkit, a container can use the GPU too. Many simulators and deployment toolchains ship an official Docker image.

ExampleOn an Ubuntu 24.04 host, pulling the official ROS 2 Humble image and building and running a driver package that needs a 22.04 environment inside the container.

Also called

Container, Image, Dockerfile

Related

Conda · Ubuntu Linux · CUDA · Robot Operating System 2 · Inference Deployment · AutoDL

Sources

Docker Docs: What is Docker?