Lessons learned from container workshop at RSEcon 2023

[bast]

what I learned in container workshop at RSEcon (saving also as issue to the repo just in case we one day expand the container section):

• on macos people seem to use https://lima-vm.io/ to run apptainer
• there can be issues on ARM-based chips so test your container also on M1 and similar chips
  • fix:
  • edit /opt/homebrew/share/lima/examples/apptainer.yml
  • add one line on top: arch: "x86_64"
  • look for location: "~" and below add writable: true
• useful: $ singularity inspect container.sif
• put it on Zenodo and get a DOI
• MPI lib inside the container needs to be binary-compatible with MPI on the host system
• build images with docker and then translate it to singularity (to work around ARM issues)