Docker multi-stage with AWS CLI

Question

I am setting up a multistage build in Docker where I need to pull some data from a remote image. In that remote image, I see they installed the AWS CLI using the following set of commands in order to get it into an Alpine-based image:

RUN apk --no-cache add python3 && \
    pip3 install awscli && \
    aws --version

The copy say it's just fine

COPY --from=remote_setup /usr/bin/terraform /usr/bin/terraform
COPY --from=remove_setup /usr/bin/aws /usr/bin/aws

Terraform here runs peachy, but AWS does not. The output looks like this:

/ # terraform -v
Terraform v0.12.2

/ # ls -lh /usr/bin | grep aws
-rwxr-xr-x    1 root     root         817 Jun 19 19:51 aws
/ # aws --version
/bin/sh: aws: not found

If I add python3, I then get this error:

/ # aws --version
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/aws", line 19, in <module>
    import awscli.clidriver
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'awscli'

Is there a trick to copying over all the data from a command in that particular layer to my new one or for simplicity's sake should I just install Python and the AWS CLI myself in my image?

Thanks!

Can't you install the python and awscli instead? Installing will make sure that it downloads all the dependencies and set up the required configurations. — Vineet Palan, Jun 19 '19 at 21:20

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 19 '19 at 23:07

pip is the standard Python package manager. In addition to installing a wrapper script in /usr/bin (or the current environment's bin directory) it also installs a fair bit of library code under a .../lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/... tree. Also, packages are allowed to depend on other packages, so it's not going to just be a single directory in the site-packages directory.

In short: you will need the Python interpreter and everything the pip install installs, so you should run that command yourself in your derived image.

Docker multi-stage with AWS CLI

1 Answers1