Container images

With this installation method, you use a pre-built OCI image that already contains one of the env/aws/* Spack environments.

Prerequisites

You will need either Docker, Podman, or another OCI-compatible container runtime.

The following images are currently available:

OCI image	Base OS	Processor Architecture
`artefact.skao.int/ska-sdp-spack-ubuntu`	Ubuntu 22.04	x86_64_v3
`artefact.skao.int/ska-sdp-spack-rhel9`	RHEL 9	x86_64_v3

These images are built from the corresponding Spack environment under env/aws/<distro> and published on release.

Installation

Step 1: Choose an image tag

Released images are published to the SKAO Central Artefact Repository (CAR) with the project release tag, for example 2026.04.5:

$ export OCI_TAG=2026.04.5

Step 2: Pull the image

Pull the image matching the environment you want to use:

$ docker pull artefact.skao.int/ska-sdp-spack-ubuntu:${OCI_TAG}
$ docker pull artefact.skao.int/ska-sdp-spack-rhel9:${OCI_TAG}

If you use Podman, replace docker with podman in the examples below.

Step 3: Run software from the image

The image entrypoint automatically initialises Spack and activates the bundled environment, so package executables are ready to use immediately:

$ docker run --rm artefact.skao.int/ska-sdp-spack-ubuntu:${OCI_TAG} wsclean --version

To open an interactive shell with the environment already activated:

$ docker run --rm -it artefact.skao.int/ska-sdp-spack-ubuntu:${OCI_TAG}

Inside the container you can inspect the available software with Spack:

$ spack find
$ spack load wsclean
$ wsclean --version

To work with local files on the host, mount a host directory into the container like this:

$ docker run --rm -it \
                -v "$PWD":/work \
                -w /work \
                artefact.skao.int/ska-sdp-spack-ubuntu:${OCI_TAG} \
                /bin/bash

This starts a shell in /work while keeping the packaged Spack environment active.