Build Docker Images

This guide provides two methods for building Docker images: the base image, ideal for specifying Python dependencies at runtime, and the hermetic image, which includes default dependencies for offline use.

Base Image

If you only need the base image with ray + uv, you can build it like so:

cd docker/
docker buildx build --target base -t nemo_rl -f Dockerfile ..

This is our recommendation as it is a small image and allows you to specify your Python dependencies at runtime.

Hermetic Image

The Docker image build without a target stage will include all of the default dependencies to get started.

cd docker/
docker buildx build -t nemo_rl -f Dockerfile ..

This image sets up the Python environment for you, so you do not have to use uv if you don’t need any other packages.

This image is useful in situations where you may not have network connectivity to re-download packages.