How to build Docker Flower images locally#

Flower provides pre-made docker images on Docker Hub that include all necessary dependencies for running the SuperLink. You can also build your own custom docker images from scratch with a different version of Python or Ubuntu if that is what you need. In this guide, we will explain what images exist and how to build them locally.

Before we can start, we need to meet a few prerequisites in our local development environment.

Clone the flower repository.

$ git clone https://github.com/adap/flower.git && cd flower

Verify the Docker daemon is running.

Please follow the first section on Run Flower using Docker which covers this step in more detail.

Currently, Flower provides two images, a base image and a superlink image. The base image, as the name suggests, contains basic dependencies that the SuperLink needs. This includes system dependencies, Python and Python tools. The SuperLink image is based on the base image, but it additionally installs the SuperLink using pip.

The build instructions that assemble the images are located in the respective Dockerfiles. You can find them in the subdirectories of src/docker.

Both, base and SuperLink image are configured via build arguments. Through build arguments, we can make our build more flexible. For example, in the base image, we can specify the version of Python to install using the PYTHON_VERSION build argument. Some of the build arguments have default values, others must be specified when building the image. All available build arguments for each image are listed in one of the tables below.

Building the base image#

Build argument	Description	Required	Example
`PYTHON_VERSION`	Version of `python` to be installed.	Yes	`3.11`
`PIP_VERSION`	Version of `pip` to be installed.	Yes	`23.0.1`
`SETUPTOOLS_VERSION`	Version of `setuptools` to be installed.	Yes	`69.0.2`
`UBUNTU_VERSION`	Version of the official Ubuntu Docker image.	Defaults to `22.04`.

The following example creates a base image with Python 3.11.0, pip 23.0.1 and setuptools 69.0.2:

$ cd src/docker/base/
$ docker build \
  --build-arg PYTHON_VERSION=3.11.0 \
  --build-arg PIP_VERSION=23.0.1 \
  --build-arg SETUPTOOLS_VERSION=69.0.2 \
  -t flwr_base:0.1.0 .

The name of image is flwr_base and the tag 0.1.0. Remember that the build arguments as well as the name and tag can be adapted to your needs. These values serve as examples only.

Building the SuperLink image#

Build argument	Description	Required	Example
`BASE_REPOSITORY`	The repository name of the base image.	Defaults to `flwr/base`.
`PYTHON_VERSION`	The Python version of the base image.	Defaults to `py3.11`.
`UBUNTU_VERSION`	The Ubuntu version of the base image.	Defaults to `ubuntu22.04`.
`FLWR_PACKAGE`	The PyPI package to install.	Defaults to `flwr`.
`FLWR_VERSION`	Version of Flower to be installed.	Yes	`1.8.0`

The following example creates a SuperLink image with the official Flower base image py3.11-ubuntu22.04 and Flower 1.8.0:

$ cd src/docker/superlink/
$ docker build \
  --build-arg FLWR_VERSION=1.8.0 \
  -t flwr_superlink:0.1.0 .

The name of image is flwr_superlink and the tag 0.1.0. Remember that the build arguments as well as the name and tag can be adapted to your needs. These values serve as examples only.

If you want to use your own base image instead of the official Flower base image, all you need to do is set the BASE_REPOSITORY, PYTHON_VERSION and UBUNTU_VERSION build arguments. .. code-block:: bash

$ cd src/docker/superlink/ $ docker build

–build-arg BASE_REPOSITORY=flwr_base –build-arg PYTHON_VERSION=3.11 –build-arg UBUNTU_VERSION=ubuntu22.04 –build-arg FLWR_VERSION=1.8.0 -t flwr_superlink:0.1.0 .

After creating the image, we can test whether the image is working:

$ docker run --rm flwr_superlink:0.1.0 --help