Common Dockerfile patterns

Include a Binary

Often times we need a binary in our workflow which we may not want to store in a repository with our workflow code. In this case, we can download a binary in our Dockerfile and unpack it. Below we download and unpack bowtie2.

RUN curl -L https://sourceforge.net/projects/bowtie-bio/files/bowtie2/2.4.4/bowtie2-2.4.4-linux-x86_64.zip/download -o bowtie2-2.4.4.zip &&\
    unzip bowtie2-2.4.4.zip &&\
    mv bowtie2-2.4.4-linux-x86_64 bowtie2

Run Docker in Docker

Use --base-image docker with latch init to use a base workflow environment which includes Docker. An example of running a containerized bowtie2 aligner in a Latch workflow can be found using latch init --template docker my_bowtie2_example.