PowerShell Core on smaller Linux distributions (eg. Alpine)

I’d like to try to get PowerShell Core working on Alpine Linux, with the long term goal of being able to run lightweight PowerShell Core Docker containers. The Docker container images I built using Ubuntu 16 and CentOS 7 are a bit on the large side.

So far, we know the following:

• .NET Core is included with the PowerShell Core distributions
• .NET Core has a dependency on libicu52 and libunwind8

What we need to figure out:

• How to install or compile libicu52 on Alpine Linux
• How to install or compile libunwind8 on Alpine Linux
• How to install or compile PowerShell Core binaries on Alpine Linux

Anyone want to provide some insight to this effort?

Cheers, Trevor Sullivan Docker Captain Microsoft MVP: Cloud & Data Center Management https://trevorsullivan.net https://twitter.com/pcgeek86

[pcgeek86]

So, I talked with the .NET team, and discovered that there’s a microsoft/dotnet:core image that’s only 250 MB. By inspecting the Dockerfile for .NET Core dependencies, I was able to produce a smaller Docker image for PowerShell Core, than what was possible with Ubuntu and CentOS 7. I used the Dockerfile statements from the .NET Core dependencies base image, and extended it to include PowerShell Core from a local build context. That avoided the need to install curl or wget along with extra dependencies.

Now, the Docker image based on Debian Jessie is only 334.3 MB.

https://twitter.com/pcgeek86/status/769239625047035904 https://hub.docker.com/r/trevorsullivan/powershell/

PS C:\Users\TrevorSullivan\PowerShellCore> docker images trevorsullivan/powershell
REPOSITORY                  TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
trevorsullivan/powershell   jessie              4abfcbcdfcf8        16 minutes ago      334.3 MB
trevorsullivan/powershell   centos7             6d7da3eb764b        7 days ago          571.5 MB
trevorsullivan/powershell   latest              3cbb7892a31c        8 days ago          537.1 MB

It’s still not as small as we could get with Alpine Linux, but it’s a huge improvement.

[andyleejordan]

@pcgeek86 do our new containers fit your need?