When working with containers it's useful to have a proper shell inside the environment for debugging or general research purposes. This repository contains the package definition and a Github action that creates and pushes a container with bash as a webshell:

How to

There are two sample images provided:

Nix-based one
Debian-based one

The instructions below could be applied to either one of them

Initial setup

Follow the common setup tutorial to have the image repository and a compute pool in your account.

With Github actions

Fork/clone this repository in your Github account
In your copy of this repository add action secrets (repository Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions):
- REGISTRY_URL: <snowflakeOrg-snowflakeAccount>.registry.snowflakecomputing.com/<database>/<schema>/<registry_name>. See output of SHOW IMAGE REPOSITORIES for exact value
- SNOWFLAKE_USER: username of Snowflake user that has access to the image repository
- SNOWFLAKE_PASSWORD: password for SNOWFLAKE_USER
Run "Build and push image to Snowflake" action for the chosen image

Without Github actions

SPCS (at the time of writing) only works with x86_64 images. So, on an M1 machine you would need access to a remote builder capable of building x86_64 packages – for example a virtual machine.

Nix-based workflow

The nix-based image requires nix.

Have nix available (optionally with direnv)
Clone the repository
Configure the environment variables:

If using direnv: edit .envrc.

Otherwise, define REGISTRY_URL, SNOWFLAKE_USER and SNOWFLAKE_PASSWORD variables
Run nix run <pathToClonedRepo>#buildAndPushToSpcs -- "ttydContainer"

Docker-based workflow

Change directory to ./non-nix/ and follow the "Build image and upload" steps from Snowpark container services tutorial.

Final steps

After the image has been pushed to Snowflake (through action or from local machine).

Create the service:

CREATE SERVICE <serviceName>
IN COMPUTE POOL <computePoolName>
FROM SPECIFICATION $$
spec:
  containers:
    - name: <container_name>
      image: /<database>>/<schema>/<registry_name>/<containerTag>:latest
      command:
        - "ttyd"
        - "--port=8000"
        - "--writable"
        - "sh"
  endpoints:
    - name: ttyd
      port: 8000
      public: true
$$;

where <containerTag> is nix-ttydcontainer or ttydcontainer. Check action logs for the specific value.

Wait for endpoints provisioning to complete (you can monitor the output of SHOW ENDPOINTS IN SERVICE <serviceName>)
Open the ttyd endpoint URL

Packages in the container

The container comes with certain tools pre-installed (see the list in package definition).

Additional packages can be temporarily pulled in as:

$ nix shell nixpkgs#hello
$ hello
Hello World!
# or
$ nix run nixpkgs#hello
Hello World!

This works for any package from nixpkgs or for any flake reference.

To add/remove a package to the container, edit the container definition file and rerun the pipeline.

Running without Nix (general instructions)

The main mechanism through which the shell is displayed in the browser is ttyd which can be added to any other Docker image.

A sample Debian-based image is provided in this repo.