EDIT: I have a much better cross-architecture build pipeline now

In preparation for the eventual shift to ARM that I will experience (whether directly or indirectly) with Apple shifting their Macbooks to ARM I needed a way to build my containers for ARM.

Prepare Your Linux Host: #

Configure Docker to Pull Multi-Architecture Images: #

After installing Docker on your host, enable experimental features to allow for you to pull containers that don’t match your architecture.

Add the following to /etc/docker/daemon.json:

{ 
    "experimental": true 
}

Then restart the Docker service:

systemctl restart docker.service

To test, pull the arm version of the official Debian Docker image:

docker pull debian:stable --platform arm

stable: Pulling from library/debian
8889795e1736: Pull complete 
Digest: sha256:281dabbeb55dd7fe6603c0afafdc1800ea4f4ab057516dfb629fe30eb642daf7
Status: Downloaded newer image for debian:stable
docker.io/library/debian:stable

Install Relevant Packages: #

In order to emulate ARM properly, we need to install two packages:

• qemu-user-binfmt
• qemu-user-static

Debian/Ubuntu derivatives:

apt-get update
apt-get install qemu-user-binfmt qemu-user-static -y

Arch Linux:

Use the following AUR packages:

qemu-user-static

binfmt-qemu-static

Once the packages are installed, see if you can run the Debian arm image that we downloaded:

docker run -v /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static:/usr/bin/qemu-arm-static --platform arm --rm -ti debian:stable bash

root@25425d924f4a:/# arch
armv7l

Building ARM Containers: #

Let’s make a new directory for our test container image:

mkdir -p test-container && cd test-container

Now, let’s add the qemu-arm-static binary to that new directory (it will be copied to the container image):

cp /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static .

Now, in your Dockerfile you’ll just have to make sure the qemu-arm-static binary is added. For example:

FROM debian:stable

COPY qemu-arm-static /usr/bin/qemu-arm-static

CMD ["/bin/bash"]

Adding the qemu-arm-static binary will add about 4 MB of space to your container but will allow your ARM images to be able to run on any x86 Linux host with qemu-arm-static installed and configured.

When you build using that Dockerfile you should specify the platform, like so:

docker build heywoodlh/test-container:arm -f Dockerfile .

With the arm tag you will have to specify that tag in order to use that image.

With the qemu-arm-static binary in /usr/bin/ you should be able to run the container on the Linux host with qemu-arm-static installed:

docker run -it --rm heywoodlh/test-container:arm bash

root@b80788989cff:/# arch
armv7l