Build an Amazon Linux 2023 container image with a Common Lisp implementation

This project aims to create a container image that allows reproducible compilation of Common Lisp projects into standalone executables for Amazon Linux 2023.

It relies on Roswell (https://github.com/roswell/roswell) to install various Common Lisp implementations.

SBCL works well; however, the image can experimentally use other implementations. ECL (--impl ecl) and Clozure CL (--impl ccl-bin) appear to work but have been minimally tested. Other implementations may require additional packages that are not included in the image.

The image can be used to run arbitrary Common Lisp programs with its included implementation. Please note that for this purpose you may find the image suboptimal due to its large size, which results from Roswell dependencies for building Common Lisp implementations.

The project was inspired by https://github.com/y2q-actionman/cl-aws-custom-runtime-test.

Building the image with build-image.sh

build-image.sh is a thin wrapper around docker build that supplies sensible defaults and a few convenience flags.

Basic usage

./build-image.sh --impl sbcl-bin

• Builds the image with the latest binary SBCL available via Roswell. • Produces cl-amazon-linux:sbcl-bin-<SBCL-VERSION> (for example cl-amazon-linux:sbcl-bin-2.5.5).

Selecting an implementation (and version)

./build-image.sh --impl sbcl-bin/2.3.7   # specific SBCL binary release
./build-image.sh --impl sbcl-bin         # latest SBCL binary release
./build-image.sh --impl sbcl             # compile SBCL from source
./build-image.sh --impl ecl/24.5.10      # specific ECL version
./build-image.sh --impl ccl-bin          # latest Clozure CL release

• A value ending in -bin tells Roswell to download a pre-built binary. • Omitting -bin makes Roswell build the implementation from source, which takes longer and pulls in more development packages.

Customising image name and tag

./build-image.sh -n my-lisp -t v1.0 --impl sbcl-bin

(If -t/--tag is omitted, the script auto-tags the image based on the implementation and version.)

Disabling BuildKit

BuildKit is enabled by default for speed and smaller layers. Disable it when working with older Docker releases:

DOCKER_BUILDKIT=0 ./build-image.sh --impl sbcl-bin

Passing extra arguments to docker build

Anything after a literal -- is forwarded verbatim:

./build-image.sh --impl sbcl-bin -- --no-cache

Verifying the image

docker run --rm cl-amazon-linux:sbcl-bin-2.5.5 \
  ros run --eval '(format t "~A/~A works!~%" (lisp-implementation-type) (lisp-implementation-version))' -q