Sebastiaan van Stijn 0df791cb72 explicitly access Container.State instead of through embedded struct
The Container.State struct holds the container's state, and most of
its fields are expected to change dynamically. Some o these state-changes
are explicit, for example, setting the container to be "stopped". Other
state changes can be more explicit, for example due to the containers'
process exiting or being "OOM" killed by the kernel.

The distinction between explicit ("desired") state changes and "state"
("actual state") is sometimes vague; for some properties, we clearly
separated them, for example if a user requested the container to be
stopped or restarted, we store state in the Container object itself;

    HasBeenManuallyStopped   bool // used for unless-stopped restart policy
    HasBeenManuallyRestarted bool `json:"-"` // used to distinguish restart caused by restart policy from the manual one

Other properties are more ambiguous. such as "HasBeenStartedBefore" and
"RestartCount", which are stored on the Container (and persisted to
disk), but may be more related to "actual" state, and likely should
not be persisted;

    RestartCount             int
    HasBeenStartedBefore     bool

Given that (per the above) concurrency must be taken into account, most
changes to the `container.State` struct should be protected; here's where
things get blurry. While the `State` type provides various accessor methods,
only some of them take concurrency into account; for example, [State.IsRunning]
and [State.GetPID] acquire a lock, whereas [State.ExitCodeValue] does not.
Even the (commonly used) [State.StateString] has no locking at all.

The way to handle this is error-prone; [container.State] contains a mutex,
and it's exported. Given that its embedded in the [container.Container]
struct, it's also exposed as an exported mutex for the container. The
assumption here is that by "merging" the two, the caller to acquire a lock
when either the container _or_ its state must be mutated. However, because
some methods on `container.State` handle their own locking, consumers must
be deeply familiar with the internals; if both changes to the `Container`
AND `Container.State` must be made. This gets amplified more as some
(exported!) methods, such as [container.SetRunning] mutate multiple fields,
but don't acquire a lock (so expect the caller to hold one), but their
(also exported) counterpart (e.g. [State.IsRunning]) do.

It should be clear from the above, that this needs some architectural
changes; a clearer separation between "desired" and "actual" state (opening
the potential to update the container's config without manually touching
its `State`), possibly a method to obtain a read-only copy of the current
state (for those querying state), and reviewing which fields belong where
(and should be persisted to disk, or only remain in memory).

This PR preserves the status quo; it makes no structural changes, other
than exposing where we access the container's state. Where previously the
State fields and methods were referred to as "part of the container"
(e.g. `ctr.IsRunning()` or `ctr.Running`), we now explicitly reference
the embedded `State` (`ctr.State.IsRunning`, `ctr.State.Running`).

The exception (for now) is the mutex, which is still referenced through
the embedded struct (`ctr.Lock()` instead of `ctr.State.Lock()`), as this
is (mostly) by design to protect the container, and what's in it (including
its `State`).

[State.IsRunning]: c4afa77157/daemon/container/state.go (L205-L209)
[State.GetPID]: c4afa77157/daemon/container/state.go (L211-L216)
[State.ExitCodeValue]: c4afa77157/daemon/container/state.go (L218-L228)
[State.StateString]: c4afa77157/daemon/container/state.go (L102-L131)
[container.State]: c4afa77157/daemon/container/state.go (L15-L23)
[container.Container]: c4afa77157/daemon/container/container.go (L67-L75)
[container.SetRunning]: c4afa77157/daemon/container/state.go (L230-L277)

Signed-off-by: Sebastiaan van Stijn <github@gone.nl>
2025-09-19 16:02:14 +02:00
2025-08-26 13:14:36 +02:00
2025-07-22 19:15:02 +01:00
2025-08-08 00:24:37 +02:00
2025-09-03 20:31:17 +02:00
2025-09-04 22:53:40 -07:00
2025-09-05 23:44:35 +02:00
2025-09-03 20:31:17 +02:00
2025-09-03 20:31:17 +02:00
2018-09-12 14:27:53 +01:00
2019-07-29 16:59:08 -07:00
2025-08-01 01:48:55 +02:00
2024-08-02 10:01:48 +02:00
2025-09-03 20:31:17 +02:00

The Moby Project

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Moby is an open-source project created by Docker to enable and accelerate software containerization.

It provides a "Lego set" of toolkit components, the framework for assembling them into custom container-based systems, and a place for all container enthusiasts and professionals to experiment and exchange ideas. Components include container build tools, a container registry, orchestration tools, a runtime and more, and these can be used as building blocks in conjunction with other tools and projects.

Principles

Moby is an open project guided by strong principles, aiming to be modular, flexible and without too strong an opinion on user experience. It is open to the community to help set its direction.

  • Modular: the project includes lots of components that have well-defined functions and APIs that work together.
  • Batteries included but swappable: Moby includes enough components to build fully featured container systems, but its modular architecture ensures that most of the components can be swapped by different implementations.
  • Usable security: Moby provides secure defaults without compromising usability.
  • Developer focused: The APIs are intended to be functional and useful to build powerful tools. They are not necessarily intended as end user tools but as components aimed at developers. Documentation and UX is aimed at developers not end users.

Audience

The Moby Project is intended for engineers, integrators and enthusiasts looking to modify, hack, fix, experiment, invent and build systems based on containers. It is not for people looking for a commercially supported system, but for people who want to work and learn with open source code.

Relationship with Docker

The components and tools in the Moby Project are initially the open source components that Docker and the community have built for the Docker Project. New projects can be added if they fit with the community goals. Docker is committed to using Moby as the upstream for the Docker Product. However, other projects are also encouraged to use Moby as an upstream, and to reuse the components in diverse ways, and all these uses will be treated in the same way. External maintainers and contributors are welcomed.

The Moby project is not intended as a location for support or feature requests for Docker products, but as a place for contributors to work on open source code, fix bugs, and make the code more useful. The releases are supported by the maintainers, community and users, on a best efforts basis only. For customers who want enterprise or commercial support, Docker Desktop and Mirantis Container Runtime are the appropriate products for these use cases.


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It is your responsibility to ensure that your use and/or transfer does not violate applicable laws.

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Licensing

Moby is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for the full license text.

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