p4c-docker

To get the P4 programming language compiler, you can

• build p4 compiler from source
• install pre-built packages on ubuntu 20.04 or 21.04, debian 11
• run pre-built docker images from Open Networking Foundation. They didn't name docker tag with version, so the version may be changed in the future.
  • opennetworking/p4c:stable: Version 1.1.0-rc1 (SHA: e2934ab32)
  • opennetworking/p4c:stable-20210108: Version 1.2.0 (SHA: 41b6968f8 BUILD: RELEASE)
  • opennetworking/p4c:latest: Version 1.2.2.1 (SHA: cc9e4c5d3 BUILD: RELEASE)
• install pre-built packages in docker. It's fast for installation and cross-platform.

To build p4 compiler from source with the Dockerfile from ONF, it takes me 24 minutes. They didn't provide an easy installation method for p4 developer, so I install the pre-build packages in docker to compile my p4 program.

Installing from the repo gives you newer compiler version than opennetworking/p4c:latest because the pre-built compiler on ubuntu 20.04 is newer.

Installation

Install docker or podman first.

docker build -t doraeric/p4c "https://github.com/doraeric/p4c-docker.git#main"
# or
podman build -t doraeric/p4c "https://github.com/doraeric/p4c-docker.git#main"

Usage

You can save the alias in ~/.bashrc, so it's added to bash automatically.

# for docker
alias p4c-bm2-ss='docker run --rm \
  -u $UID:$GID \
  -v "`pwd`:/cwd" \
  -w /cwd \
  doraeric/p4c \
  p4c-bm2-ss'

# for podman
alias p4c-bm2-ss='podman run --rm \
  -v "`pwd`:/cwd" \
  -w /cwd \
  doraeric/p4c \
  p4c-bm2-ss'

# compile p4
mkdir -p build
p4c-bm2-ss --arch v1model -o build/bmv2.json --p4runtime-files build/p4info.txt src/main.p4