Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] [Docker] New GNU Radio images with GUI support

[Kevin Hofschröer]

Hello Stefan and all,

I also recently experimented with GR and Docker and at least got it working so 
far.
My approach was different in that I used the ubuntu:16.04 base image where 
gnuradio v3.7.9.1 (so pretty new) is available pre-compiled in the official 
ubuntu repositories.
Of course that approach isn't something for developers, but if you
 1. apt-get install gnuradio-dev
 2. apt-get remove gnuradio-dev
 3. install some missing header packages, thrift and other libs that are not 
included in the gnuradio-dev package and
 4. get the gnuradio v3.7.9.1 sources and compile it yourself ,
you can get a good basis for devs. Of course, if you just want to play around 
with gnuradio, you probably don't need these steps.

Another thing that might be useful:
If you want GUI-applications without using VNC (AND if you use linux), you 
might want to have a look at
http://fabiorehm.com/blog/2014/09/11/running-gui-apps-with-docker/
where the idea is to basically share your .Xauthority file and your 
/tmp/.X11-unix socket. It looks pretty hacky, but it worked perfect for me. For 
QT, you seem to need to replace
"-e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY"
within the run command (or use a Dockerfile ENV line) with
"-e DISPLAY=unix$DISPLAY".
Of course, this wouldn't work that way for Windows. But I could imagine that 
devices can cause problems there as well because of the small VM that you need.

Hope you find some of this helpful.

Greetings,
Kevin