Re: Run graphical application in container

[Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>]

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On Tue, Oct 16, 2018 at 04:22:43PM +0200, Pierre Neidhardt wrote:
> I think this was mentioned before on the mailing list but I cannot find
> it back.

I think the first discussion was here, regarding IceCat:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2016-07/msg00120.html

And a more recent discussion is here:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2018-01/msg00056.html

> The following won't work:
> 
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> $ guix environment -C -N --ad-hoc epiphany -- epiphany
> Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
> Failed to parse arguments: Cannot open display: 
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> Is it possible to start a graphical application in a container?

I think you'll need to share the host system's X socket, like
'--share=/tmp/.X11-unix' or '--share=/tmp/serverauth.$RANDOM' and then
`export DISPLAY=":0.0"` in the container. $RANDOM is a random string to
make the filename unpredictable.

So, it's definitely possible. In my experience, the hard part is finding
the myriad directories used by the software and sharing or exposing them
to the container. This is shown in the second discussion I linked above.

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