Dockerizing an app that uses mxnet package in R - r

Question

I am dockerizing a shiny app that uses 'mxnet' package. After lots of efforts I concluded that I need to build and install the package instead of just installing it normally from the dmlc repos. Below is me simplified dockerfile that tries to build and install the mxnet:
FROM r-base:latest
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
sudo \
gdebi-core \
pandoc \
pandoc-citeproc \
libcurl4-gnutls-dev \
libcairo2-dev/unstable \
libxt-dev \
libssl-dev
# Download and install shiny server
RUN wget --no-verbose https://s3.amazonaws.com/rstudio-shiny-server-os- build/ubuntu-12.04/x86_64/VERSION -O "version.txt" && \
VERSION=$(cat version.txt) && \
wget --no-verbose "https://s3.amazonaws.com/rstudio-shiny-server-os- build/ubuntu-12.04/x86_64/shiny-server-$VERSION-amd64.deb" -O ss-latest.deb && \
gdebi -n ss-latest.deb && \
rm -f version.txt ss-latest.deb
# Here comes the installation of other required packages:
# .......
#*** Here comes the problamatic bit: building Installing mxnet
RUN sudo apt-get update
RUN sudo apt-get install -y build-essential git libatlas-base-dev libopencv-dev
RUN git clone --recursive https://github.com/dmlc/mxnet
RUN cd mxnet; make -j$(nproc)
RUN Rscript -e "install.packages('devtools', repo = 'https://cran.rstudio.com')"
RUN cd R-package
RUN Rscript -e "library('devtools'); library('methods'); options(repos=c(CRAN='https://cran.rstudio.com')); install_deps(dependencies = TRUE)"
RUN cd ..
RUN make rpkg
COPY shiny-server.conf /etc/shiny-server/shiny-server.conf
COPY /myapp/* /srv/shiny-server/
EXPOSE 80
COPY shiny-server.sh /usr/bin/shiny-server.sh
CMD ["/usr/bin/shiny-server.sh"]
After running this, I recieve an error saying:
can not cd to R-Package
Any help?

Answer 1

Try with
RUN cd mxnet; make -j$(nproc)\
&& Rscript -e "install.packages('devtools', repo = 'https://cran.rstudio.com')"
your RUN cd .. will not do what you expect, it is the same as opening a terminal, doing cd abc/def and in another terminal, which is in /home/$USER, doing cd .., you will not be in abc.
You should group your RUN commands in order to limit the number of layers in your image, see
https://docs.docker.com/engine/userguide/eng-image/dockerfile_best-practices/
Check also the WORKDIR directive in a Dockerfile
https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/builder/#workdir
You can check what is correctly done (or not) by launching a shell
docker run -it your_image /bin/bash
and then check what is present or not.