alpine docker: installing pandas / numpy

Question

I install py3-pandas as following,

 FROM alpine:latest

 RUN echo "http://dl-8.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing" >> /etc/apk/repositories
 RUN echo "http://dl-8.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community" >> /etc/apk/repositories


 RUN apk add --update \
   python3 \
   python3-dev \
   py3-numpy py3-pandas py3-scipy py3-numpy-dev

Then I try to import pandas, it's not avaialble

bash-5.0# python3
Python 3.7.5 (default, Oct 17 2019, 12:25:15)
[GCC 8.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import pandas
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pandas'
>>> import sys
>>> sys.path
['', '/usr/lib/python37.zip', '/usr/lib/python3.7', '/usr/lib/python3.7/lib-dynload', '/usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages', '/retention']
>>>

So it turns out pandas are installed in the different python directory

bash-5.0# apk info -L py3-pandas
....
usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pandas/__pycache__/__init__.cpython-38.pyc


bash-5.0# ls /usr/bin/python*
/usr/bin/python             /usr/bin/python2.7          /usr/bin/python3-config     /usr/bin/python3.7-config   /usr/bin/python3.7m-config
/usr/bin/python2            /usr/bin/python3            /usr/bin/python3.7          /usr/bin/python3.7m

How do I make py3-pandas to use the python version which is already installed in the system?

Answer 1

You're mixing your versions - your Dockerfile is using latest but you're including "edge" repositories.

To use Python 3.7 (no testing repo), you could use the following:

FROM alpine:latest

RUN echo "http://dl-8.alpinelinux.org/alpine/latest-stable/community" >> /etc/apk/repositories

but you risk changing versions in the future. Best to use:

FROM alpine:3.10

RUN echo "http://dl-8.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/community" >> /etc/apk/repositories

If you really want Python 3.8 and "testing" repo, you'll have to use latest (again at the risk of changing versions):

FROM alpine:edge

RUN echo "http://dl-8.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing" >> /etc/apk/repositories
RUN echo "http://dl-8.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/community" >> /etc/apk/repositories