GUI?

[upintheairsheep]

Hello, at some point someone will inevitably need to run a GUI app on here.
if not the scope of the other project, please integrate XQuartz and Owl (Wayland client) as optional add-ons, and additionally you could also take the FreeRDP route by porting Microsoft's wslG at https://github.com/microsoft/wslg

Also would be nice if it would automatically create app shortcuts in ~/Applications (Linux)/containername similar to Parallels.

[simnaut]

Running graphical applications in linux containers is a typical workflow. Having native support for xorg and wayland would be great.

[jglogan]

Hi @upintheairsheep, thanks for the request! A GUI would be really nice to have but the goal of the container project is to provide a CLI tool, as well as an underlying API that other projects can use to create additional containerization applications (such as a management GUI application).

We have no plans to build a GUI into the actual service using a remote display protocol.

I'm closing this issue as it's out of the scope of the project, but a discussion would be a great place to get users and contributors together to discuss possibilities for a GUI.

[simnaut]

Hello- I think there may be a misunderstanding. This is not asking for a containerization GUI. This is asking for native support for displaying and interacting with graphical applications that run inside containers. (Wayland and X11 support)

[jglogan]

Thanks! That makes sense, on reread I understand the ask now. Let me do a little investigating.

[jglogan]

I’m still looking into this but here’s what I propose, assuming that what you want is to be able to run a container with a workload that wants to connect to a display server running on your host. Let me know if I got that wrong.

The limitation that prevents you from doing this simply is this: https://github.com/apple/container/blob/main/docs/technical-overview.md#container-to-host-networking. In mature desktop container runtimes, you get a special IP and hostname (such as host.docker.internal) that redirects to the loopback IP on your host, since 127.0.0.1 in your container corresponds to your container’s loopback interface.

You could try it but IIRC the socat workaround shown in the linked section won’t work for Xwin-like protocols since the display server instructs the client to reconnect on an ephemeral port after the initial connect. I’ll double check that later; it’s been an age since I’ve used Quartz or anything like it.

As for this issue, what I propose is that we close this one and open up a broader and more clearly titled one that describes this use case in it, along with others (very common is “I want my containerized API server to connect to Postgres/MySQL/Maria that’s running directly on my host). How does this sound?

Again, thanks for understanding my misunderstanding! Hope this speaks to what you’re asking for.

[upintheairsheep]

I’m still looking into this but here’s what I propose, assuming that what you want is to be able to run a container with a workload that wants to connect to a display server running on your host. Let me know if I got that wrong.

The limitation that prevents you from doing this simply is this: https://github.com/apple/container/blob/main/docs/technical-overview.md#container-to-host-networking. In mature desktop container runtimes, you get a special IP and hostname (such as host.docker.internal) that redirects to the loopback IP on your host, since 127.0.0.1 in your container corresponds to your container’s loopback interface.

You could try it but IIRC the socat workaround shown in the linked section won’t work for Xwin-like protocols since the display server instructs the client to reconnect on an ephemeral port after the initial connect. I’ll double check that later; it’s been an age since I’ve used Quartz or anything like it.

As for this issue, what I propose is that we close this one and open up a broader and more clearly titled one that describes this use case in it, along with others (very common is “I want my containerized API server to connect to Postgres/MySQL/Maria that’s running directly on my host). How does this sound?

Again, thanks for understanding my misunderstanding! Hope this speaks to what you’re asking for.

Thanks for the understanding. Time to time you may need to open up a GUI config window, or perhaps you need the Linux version of VSCode or Linux exclusive apps. Windows already has this. ChromeOS already has this.

[flukejones]

I've found that I require this when writing embedded applications that I test via containers - the flow I use is develop and build within a Linux container, then if possible I also preview the UI part during development. When I was using Linux full time it was an easy thing to do but now I've shifted to MacBook my workflow has to change. I especially require Wayland compositing.

Is this an accepted requirement now? Would there be a possible roadmap?

[jglogan]

The limitation remains this: #346.

[drewpotter]

Hello- I think there may be a misunderstanding. This is not asking for a containerization GUI. This is asking for native support for displaying and interacting with graphical applications that run inside containers. (Wayland and X11 support)

Wayland and QtWayland support would be really amazing 🚀