Containerized Objective-C Web Server Example

This is a small piece of example code showing how to create a Docker container running a headless Objective-C application (in this case: a small web server). This is more an exercise in demonstrating the general concept: Having deterministically built images with development tools and runtime dependencies and coordinating them to deploy the compiled artifact with minimal cruft. The build scripts for the base images are available in the gnustep-boxes project.

How it works

1. Invoke the build_outer.sh script with any parameters you'd like to pass to the final docker build command. For example, you may want to pass the repository/tag that you want to save the image under (-t my/useless-thing).
2. The scripts spins up a gnustep-headless-dev container (which has all the build tools), shares the repository directory and the host's docker socket with it. In this container, the build_inner.sh script is then run.
3. build_inner.sh installs the dependencies not bundled with the base image, as well as the app itself into a staging directory.
4. docker build is invoked to build a new image based on the gnustep-headless-rt runtime image, by just copying the staged dependencies into the correct location in the filesystem.
5. Run a container based on that image as usual:

   docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 my/useless-thing
   

6. Point your browser at the docker host's IP at port 8080 and be greeted by ‘Hello World’.

What it does

Honestly? Not much. It just responds to a GET request with a static string. It demonstrates, however, how to handle requests asynchronously using libdispatch.

License

Copyright (c) 2016 Niels Grewe

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.