page_title: Setting Up a Dev Environment
page_description: Guides on how to contribute to docker
page_keywords: Docker, documentation, developers, contributing, dev environment

# Setting Up a Dev Environment

To make it easier to contribute to Docker, we provide a standard
development environment. It is important that the same environment be
used for all tests, builds and releases. The standard development
environment defines all build dependencies: system libraries and
binaries, go environment, go dependencies, etc.

**Things you need:**

 * Docker
 * git
 * make

## Install Docker

Docker's build environment itself is a Docker container, so the first
step is to install Docker on your system.

You can follow the [install instructions most relevant to your
system](https://docs.docker.com/installation/). Make sure you
have a working, up-to-date docker installation, then continue to the
next step.

## Install tools used for this tutorial

Install `git`; honest, it's very good. You can use
other ways to get the Docker source, but they're not anywhere near as
easy.

Install `make`. This tutorial uses our base Makefile
to kick off the docker containers in a repeatable and consistent way.
Again, you can do it in other ways but you need to do more work.

## Check out the Source

    $ git clone https://git@github.com/docker/docker
    $ cd docker

To checkout a different revision just use `git checkout`
with the name of branch or revision number.

## Build the Environment

This following command builds a development environment using the
`Dockerfile` in the current directory. Essentially, it installs all
the build and runtime dependencies necessary to build and test Docker.
Your first build will take some time to complete. On Linux systems and on Mac
OS X from within the `boot2docker` shell:

    $ make build
    
> **Note**:
> On Mac OS X, the Docker make targets such as `build`, `binary`, and `test`
> should **not** be built by the 'root' user. Therefore, you shouldn't use `sudo` when 
> running these commands on OS X.
> On Linux, we suggest you add your current user to the `docker` group via
> [these
> instructions](http://docs.docker.com/installation/ubuntulinux/#giving-non-root-access).

If the build is successful, congratulations! You have produced a clean
build of docker, neatly encapsulated in a standard build environment.


## Build the Docker Binary

To create the Docker binary, run this command:

    $ make binary

This will create the Docker binary in `./bundles/<version>-dev/binary/`. If you
do not see files in the `./bundles` directory in your host, your `BINDDIR`
setting is not set quite right. You want to run the following command: 
    
    $ make BINDDIR=. binary 

If you are on a non-Linux platform, e.g., OSX, you'll want to run `make cross`
or `make BINDDIR=. cross`.

### Using your built Docker binary

The binary is available outside the container in the directory
`./bundles/<version>-dev/binary/`. You can swap your
host docker executable with this binary for live testing - for example,
on ubuntu:

    $ sudo service docker stop ; sudo cp $(which docker) $(which docker)_ ; sudo cp ./bundles/<version>-dev/binary/docker-<version>-dev $(which docker);sudo service docker start

> **Note**: 
> Its safer to run the tests below before swapping your hosts docker binary.

## Run the Tests

To execute the test cases, run this command:

    $ make test

If the test are successful then the tail of the output should look
something like this

    --- PASS: TestWriteBroadcaster (0.00 seconds)
    === RUN TestRaceWriteBroadcaster
    --- PASS: TestRaceWriteBroadcaster (0.00 seconds)
    === RUN TestTruncIndex
    --- PASS: TestTruncIndex (0.00 seconds)
    === RUN TestCompareKernelVersion
    --- PASS: TestCompareKernelVersion (0.00 seconds)
    === RUN TestHumanSize
    --- PASS: TestHumanSize (0.00 seconds)
    === RUN TestParseHost
    --- PASS: TestParseHost (0.00 seconds)
    === RUN TestParseRepositoryTag
    --- PASS: TestParseRepositoryTag (0.00 seconds)
    === RUN TestGetResolvConf
    --- PASS: TestGetResolvConf (0.00 seconds)
    === RUN TestParseRelease
    --- PASS: TestParseRelease (0.00 seconds)
    === RUN TestDependencyGraphCircular
    --- PASS: TestDependencyGraphCircular (0.00 seconds)
    === RUN TestDependencyGraph
    --- PASS: TestDependencyGraph (0.00 seconds)
    PASS
    ok      github.com/docker/docker/utils        0.017s

If `$TESTFLAGS` is set in the environment, it will pass extra arguments
to `go test`. You can use this to select certain tests to run, e.g.,

    $ TESTFLAGS='-test.run \^TestBuild\$' make test

Only those test cases matching the regular expression inside quotation marks will be tested.

If the output indicates "FAIL" and you see errors like this:

    server.go:1302 Error: Insertion failed because database is full: database or disk is full

    utils_test.go:179: Error copy: exit status 1 (cp: writing '/tmp/docker-testd5c9-[...]': No space left on device

Then you likely don't have enough memory available the test suite. 2GB
is recommended.

## Use Docker

You can run an interactive session in the newly built container:

    $ make shell

    # type 'exit' or Ctrl-D to exit

## Build And View The Documentation

If you want to read the documentation from a local website, or are
making changes to it, you can build the documentation and then serve it
by:

    $ make docs
    
    # when its done, you can point your browser to http://yourdockerhost:8000
    # type Ctrl-C to exit

**Need More Help?**

If you need more help then hop on to the [#docker-dev IRC
channel](irc://chat.freenode.net#docker-dev) or post a message on the
[Docker developer mailing
list](https://groups.google.com/d/forum/docker-dev).