June 2, 2021

In the evening I installed Docker Desktop on my Mac mini late 2014. Years ago I had looked into Docker for Mac and back then it was not that useful to me, so I stayed with Oracle's VirtualBox. Today I wanted to give docker a second chance and check if I could use it to run Pandoc inside a container to generate a PDF version of my résumé and curriculum vitae.

Installing Docker Desktop for Mac

After I had downloaded the installer, about 600MB, I opened it and macOS verified the downloaded file which took quite some time.

Next, I dragged the Docker icon and dropped it on the Applications folder shown in the installer dialog. The installation process took a few minutes.

Next, I started the Docker.app by double clicking it in the Applications folder. Another, faster, verification step took place and a dialog popped up asking me if I was sure I wanted to open Docker. I clicked the "Open" button and another warning popped up:

Docker Desktop needs privileged access to install its networking components and links to the Docker apps.

You will be asked for your password.

After I had confirmed this action with my password Docker opened a large window with the message "Docker Engine starting...". This also took quite some time.

Testing Docker for Desktop with resume-pandoc

Back in 2016 I made a résumé LaTeX template for the universal document converter Pandoc. To test Docker on my Mac mini I considered this a good candidate especially as there is already an official Docker image: pandoc/latex.

To get started, I first cloned my own GitHub repository as follows:

git clone https://github.com/john-bokma/resume-pandoc.git

This creates a new directory resume-pandoc. Next, I changed into this directory:

cd resume-pandoc

Next, I ran the following Docker command:

docker run --rm --volume "`pwd`:/data" --user `id -u`:`id -g`  \
    pandoc/latex perl-programmer-john-bokma-resume.md \
                 -f markdown+yaml_metadata_block \
                 --template templates/jb2resume.latex \
                 -o perl-programmer-john-bokma-resume.pdf

Because this was the first time I ran this command Docker downloaded the latest image for pandoc/latex. After the downloading had finished I got the following error message:

Error producing PDF.
! LaTeX Error: File `enumitem.sty' not found.

Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)

Enter file name: 
! Emergency stop.
<read *> 
         
l.14 \usepackage

This means that the package enumitem, which my resume requires, is missing from the official pandoc/latex image. So I created my own Dockerfile with the following contents:

# syntax=docker/dockerfile:1
FROM pandoc/latex:latest
RUN tlmgr update --self && tlmgr install enumitem

This uses the TeX live manager to install the enumitem package. Next, I ran:

docker build --tag=resume-pandoc .

To create my own Docker image with the missing package included.

Next, I ran the following Docker command. Note that I use the name of the newly created Docker image which includes the enumitem package:

docker run --rm --volume "`pwd`:/data" --user `id -u`:`id -g` \
    resume-pandoc perl-programmer-john-bokma-resume.md \
                  -f markdown+yaml_metadata_block \
                  --template templates/jb2resume.latex \
                  -o perl-programmer-john-bokma-resume.pdf

This resulted in another error: the sectsty package could not be found:

Error producing PDF.
! LaTeX Error: File `sectsty.sty' not found.

Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)

Enter file name: 
! Emergency stop.
<read *> 
         
l.58 \sectionfont

So I updated the Dockerfile to include this package as well:

# syntax=docker/dockerfile:1
FROM pandoc/latex:latest
RUN tlmgr update --self && tlmgr install enumitem sectsty

And rebuild the Docker image using:

docker build --tag=resume-pandoc .

After this, I ran the Docker run command again:

docker run --rm --volume "`pwd`:/data" --user `id -u`:`id -g` \
    resume-pandoc perl-programmer-john-bokma-resume.md \
                  -f markdown+yaml_metadata_block \
                  --template templates/jb2resume.latex \
                  -o perl-programmer-john-bokma-resume.pdf

And this time a PDF version of my résumé was created inside the resume-pandoc directory.

Although this was just a small test it has convinced me to put Docker to actual use on my Mac.

Related

• Docker Alpine Latext texmf-dist styles not found.
• tlmgr - the native TeX Live Manager.