Building a Virtuoso Open-Source Edition Reference Docker image

Virtuoso Universal Server Tips, Tricks, and HowTos
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Building a Virtuoso Open-Source Edition Reference Docker image

Copyright (C) 2026 OpenLink Software vos.admin@openlinksw.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

This git repository illustrates how to build a reference Virtuoso Open-Source (VOS) Docker image for a single architecture.

This image is functionally equivalent to the version distributed via the official OpenLink repository on Docker Hub.

Testing covers Ubuntu 24.04 (x86_64) and macOS Tahoe 26.4.1 (Apple Silicon).

Most modern Linux distributions provide Docker packages. For Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows, Docker installers are found at the Docker website.

Note: Please install git, docker and docker compose before running build steps.

Downloading and building the docker image

  1. Clone the git repository:
$ git clone https://github.com/openlink/vos-reference-docker
  1. Build the Docker image:
$ ./build.sh

======================================================================
  BUILD STARTED: Mon May 11 06:15:23 PM UTC 2026
======================================================================

 * Pulling docker image

 * Building docker image
   (this may take around 15-30 minutes on current hardware)

======================================================================
  BUILD FINISHED: Mon May 11 06:31:48 PM UTC 2026
======================================================================
  1. Check the Docker image version:
$ docker run -i -t vos-reference version

[vos-reference/v7.2.17]

This Docker image is using the following version of Virtuoso:

Virtuoso Open Source Edition (Column Store) (multi threaded)
Version 7.2.17.3243-pthreads as of May 11 2026 (c4fd28e)
Compiled for Linux (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 1998-2026 OpenLink Software

Configuring the Build

The build.sh script uses a small set of environment variables to control build behavior.

The GIT_TAG variable in the script specifies the VOS tree state to check out:

#
#  Build using a specific git tag, branch or commit ID
#
export GIT_TAG=v7.2.17
#export GIT_TAG=stable/7
#export GIT_TAG=c4fd28e38e0abe9b6c9841409da29c27878d8ac5

The DOCKER_TAG variable sets the output image tag:

export DOCKER_TAG=vos-reference

How does Openlink build the official images it distributes?

The difference between this reference image and the official images published by OpenLink is simple: official images are built with [Docker multi-arch support (Multi-platform builds | Docker Docs) to run natively on ARM64-based systems (macOS on Apple Silicon, cloud-based ARM instances, Raspberry Pi and similar systems) and Intel/AMD 64-bit systems supporting Docker containers.

OpenLink also provides VOS images based on Ubuntu or Alpine, for a total of four internal builds.

Building official images with the method in this reference image requires half of those builds to run through an emulator, which is slow. A native build usually takes 15-30 minutes on a matching CPU. The same build for a different CPU architecture through an emulator takes about 4-5 hours. Total build time across both distributions and architectures is about 10 hours.

OpenLink already builds and tests Virtuoso Open Source on multiple platforms to validate behavior with different operating systems, development tools and libraries. This is equivalent to the vos-build steps in this reference Dockerfile.

These builds run in parallel on separate native platforms. A tarball containing binary installation artifacts is stored on an internal server. The Docker build process then collates the four builds into one location, extracts files and uses the COPY command as in the second part of this Dockerfile.

See Also