[lxc-users] Advice on LXC usage (python3 binding)

[Journeyman]

Hello,

I just started using LXC containers in Ubuntu Xenial, my background with 
containers is with Docker, I'm trying to compare the two starting with a 
minimal personal toy project.

I'm interested namely in scripting my container workflow using the LXC 
Python3 binding, which is a great tool and I hope that it will become 
more and more complete as LXC development advances.

Documentation is somewhat minimal, but the API is pretty straightforward 
so I relied on a couple of tutorials by Stéphan Graber (thank you!) and 
scripted a tool that creates and provision an LXC container for 
continuous integration.

What this tool does is basically (using the Python API):
- lxc-create -t download
- lots of: container.attach_wait(lxc.attach_run_command, ['this', 
'this_and_that']
- lots of: container.attach_wait(lxc.attach_run_command, ['start', 
'service', 'x_and_y']

Example:

def provision_container(container_name):

     def _configure_and_run_tests():
         # ... BASH instructions to set ENV variables, then run tests
         os.chdir('src_directory')
         ret_code = call(['source', 'virtual/bin/activate'])
         ret_code = call(['python', 'manage.py', 'tests'])
	# export this and that ....
         print("Tests returned {}: {}".format(ret_code)

     container = lxc.Container(container_name)
     start_container(container)

     # install and configure stuff
     container.attach_wait(lxc.attach_run_command,
         ["apt-get", "update"])
     container.attach_wait(lxc.attach_run_command,
         ["apt-get", "dist-upgrade", "-y"])
     container.attach_wait(lxc.attach_run_command,
         ['apt-get', 'install', '-qy', 'python-pip', 'python-dev'])
     container.attach_wait(lxc.attach_run_command,
         ['pip', 'install', '--upgrade', '-q', 'pip'])
     container.attach_wait(lxc.attach_run_command,
         ['pip', 'install', '--upgrade', '-q', 'virtualenv'])
     container.attach_wait(lxc.attach_run_command,
         ['apt-get', 'install', '-qy', 'rabbitmq-server'])
     # and so on ...

     # start services
     container.attach_wait(lxc.attach_run_command,
        ['sudo ', 'service', 'svcname', 'start'])
     # etc...
     container.attach_wait(_configure_and_run_tests)


I have a couple a questions:

- some instructions are one-liners (e.g. APT installs), others require 
to "cd" into a dir, "export" variables and run other BASH commands 
before executing the real task. When I have such composite instructions 
- in the above example _configure_and_run_tests() - the only way I 
understand to run a block of instructions atomically is creating a 
subroutine and use it to run that block altogether. In this respect I 
kind of miss the Docker recipe file that allows scripting (and caching) 
every instruction without losing its context. Is there a cleaner way to 
accomplish the above?

- Also I miss a repository like DockerHub to distribute and deploy my 
containers around. If I want to distribute my LXC containers, currently 
I can do that by means of a BASH script that basically packs the rootfs 
and uploads it to a remote server. The destination server should 
download the tar.gz, stop the container, unpack and restart.
Is there a better/cleaner way to accomplish this too?

Sorry for the lengthy email and thanks for any suggestion and comment; I 
like LXC and I'm looking forward to seeing further development.

Regards,
Antonio