container-magic

Rapidly create containerised development environments

Configure once in YAML, use anywhere with Docker or Podman

What It Does

Container-magic takes a single YAML configuration file and generates:

1. A Dockerfile with multi-stage builds
2. Standalone build.sh and run.sh scripts for production

The Dockerfile and standalone scripts are committed to your repository, so anyone can use your project with just docker or podman - no need to install container-magic.

For development, cm build and cm run read the YAML config directly and handle workspace mounting, user mapping, and feature flags automatically.

Quick Start

# Install
pip install container-magic

# Create a new project
cm init python:3.11 my-project
cd my-project

# Build the container
cm build

# Run commands inside the container
cm run python --version
cm run bash -c "echo Hello from container"
cm run  # starts an interactive shell

See Getting Started for a full walkthrough.

Key Features

• YAML configuration - Single source of truth for your container setup
• Transparent execution - Run commands in container from anywhere in your repo
• Custom commands - Define commands once, use in both dev and prod
• Smart features - GPU, display (X11/Wayland), audio, and AWS credential support
• Multi-stage builds - Separate base, development, and production stages
• Live workspace mounting - Edit code on host, run in container (development)
• Standalone scripts - Production needs only docker/podman (no dependencies)