WARNING: Running pip as the 'root' user

Question

I am making simple image of my python Django app in Docker. But at the end of the building container it throws next warning (I am building it on Ubuntu 20.04):

WARNING: Running pip as the 'root' user can result in broken permissions and conflicting behaviour with the system package manager. It is recommended to use a virtual environment instead 

Why does it throw this warning if I am installing Python requirements inside my image? I am building my image using:

sudo docker build -t my_app:1 . 

Should I be worried about warning that pip throws, because I know it can break my system?

Here is my Dockerfile:

FROM python:3.8-slim-buster  WORKDIR /app  COPY requirements.txt requirements.txt  RUN pip install -r requirements.txt  COPY . .  CMD ["python", "manage.py", "runserver", "0.0.0.0:8000"] 

Answer 1

The way your container is built doesn't add a user, so everything is done as root.

You could create a user and install to that users's home directory by doing something like this;

FROM python:3.8.3-alpine  RUN pip install --upgrade pip  RUN adduser -D myuser USER myuser WORKDIR /home/myuser  COPY --chown=myuser:myuser requirements.txt requirements.txt RUN pip install --user -r requirements.txt  ENV PATH="/home/myuser/.local/bin:${PATH}"  COPY --chown=myuser:myuser . .  CMD ["python", "manage.py", "runserver", "0.0.0.0:8000"]