Read the Docs uses container virtualization to encapsulate documentation build processes. Each build spins up a new virtual machine using our base image, which is an image with the minimum necessary components required to build documentation. Virtual machines are limiting in CPU time and memory, which aims to reduce excessive usage of build resources.
Build environments use Docker to handle container virtualization. To perform any development on the Docker build system, you will need to set up Docker on your host system. Setup of Docker will vary by system, and so is out of the scope of this documentation.
To get started using Docker for build environments, you’ll need to pull down at least one build image. For example, to pull down our latest image:
docker pull readthedocs/build:latest
The default image used by our build servers is
This would be a good place to start testing as the
latest version could
operate differently. See
DOCKER_IMAGE below for setting this configuration
After this image is downloaded, you can update your settings to use the new image – see Configuration.
There are several settings used to configure usage of virtual machines:
True/False value used to enable the Docker build environment.
A dictionary of limits to virtual machines. These limits include:
- An integer representing the total allowed time limit (in seconds) of build processes. This time limit affects the parent process to the virtual machine and will force a virtual machine to die if a build is still running after the allotted time expires.
- The maximum memory allocated to the virtual machine. If this limit is hit, build processes will be automatically killed. Examples: ‘200m’ for 200MB of total memory, or ‘2g’ for 2GB of total memory.
Tag of a Docker image to use as a base image.
URI of the socket to connect to the Docker daemon. Examples include:
Version of the API to use for the Docker API client.