Provide latest Singularity in an image for testing

[mankoff]

I'm trying to debug an issue. Our HPC is version 4.0.3, and in order to file a bug report you request if I've tested on the latest version (4.3.0 at the time of this issue). If there were an option to run an image with the latest singularity this would be trivial. I cannot find this image, so I need to install a custom VM and set up Singularity there. Non-trivial.

Describe the solution you'd like

singularity-old-version pull singularity-latest
singularity-old-version shell singularity-latest
singularity --version # reports latest version

[dtrudg]

I'm afraid that running Singularity nested inside a Singularity image will often not be suitable to replicate an issue for a bug report. It depends on the nature of the bug.

When a container runtime such as Singularity is run nested in itself there are specific limitations and alternative approaches may be used for mounting filesystems etc. compared to when run directly on the host.

Having said that, some bugs will replicate, and with 4.3 we now provide documentation and an example definition file for building a container holding Singularity: https://docs.sylabs.io/guides/4.3/user-guide/nested.html

We have no plans to provide a container image of SingularityCE at this time. You may also be interested in the Windows / Mac installation instructions (for WSL2 or Lima VM) here - https://docs.sylabs.io/guides/4.3/admin-guide/installation.html#installation-on-windows-or-mac