Add new scripts for creating Docker containers to enable better testing of TFQ builds

release/docker/Dockerfile

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+# Copyright 2025 The TensorFlow Quantum Authors
+#
+# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+# You may obtain a copy of the License at
+#
+#     https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+#
+# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+# limitations under the License.
+# =============================================================================
+
+# Summary: build file for making isolated Docker environments for testing.
+# This accepts 2 optional build arguments to set the Ubuntu & Python versions.
+# Usage example:
+#
+#   docker build --no-cache --build-arg PYTHON_VERSION=3.9 \
+#     --build-arg UBUNTU_VERSION=24.04 -t my-image:latest .
+#
+# Note that the name and tag ("my-image" and "latest" in the example above) are
+# yours to choose. They're not set using the arguments or linked to their values.
+
+# Default values for build arguments:
+ARG PYTHON_VERSION=3.9
+ARG UBUNTU_VERSION=22.04
+
+FROM ubuntu:${UBUNTU_VERSION}
+
+# Make the Python version argument visible to the rest of this file after FROM.
+ARG PYTHON_VERSION
+ENV PYTHON_VERSION=${PYTHON_VERSION}
+
+ENV TZ=UTC
+ENV LANG=C.UTF-8
+ENV LC_ALL=C.UTF-8
+ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
+
+# Ensure the shell is Bash.
+SHELL ["/bin/bash", "-e", "-c"]
+
+# Tell the Dockerfile linter not to warn about how we use apt.
+# hadolint global ignore=DL3008,DL3009
+
+# Add the deadsnakes Python package archive to access older Python versions.
+RUN apt-get update -q && \
+    apt-get install -yq --no-install-recommends software-properties-common \
+        gnupg pkg-config git zip unzip zlib1g-dev && \
+    add-apt-repository -y ppa:deadsnakes/ppa && \
+    apt-get update -q
+
+# The following conditional is to handle Python 3.12's removal of distutils.
+RUN distutils_pkg="python${PYTHON_VERSION}-distutils" && \
+    if [[ "${PYTHON_VERSION#*.}" -ge 12 ]]; then \
+        distutils_pkg="python3-setuptools"; \
+    fi && \
+    apt-get install -yq --no-install-recommends python${PYTHON_VERSION} \
+        python${PYTHON_VERSION}-dev python${PYTHON_VERSION}-venv ${distutils_pkg} \
+        python3-pip python-is-python3
+
+# Use update-alternatives to make the desired version be the default.
+# hadolint ignore=SC3010
+RUN python_path="" bin="/usr/bin" && \
+    case "$(lsb_release -rs)" in \
+        "24.04") python_path="${bin}/python3.12" ;; \
+        "22.04") python_path="${bin}/python3.10" ;; \
+        "20.04") python_path="${bin}/python3.8"  ;; \
+        *) python_path=$(readlink -f ${bin}/python3) ;; \
+    esac && \
+    if [[ ! -f "${python_path}" ]]; then \
+        echo "ERROR: ${python_path} does not exist." >&2; \
+        exit 1; \
+    fi && \
+    update-alternatives --install ${bin}/python3 python3 "${python_path}" 1 && \
+    update-alternatives --install ${bin}/python3 python3 "${bin}/python${PYTHON_VERSION}" 2
+
+# Clean up before finishing.
+# hadolint ignore=DL3027
+RUN apt clean
+
+CMD ["/bin/bash"]

release/docker/README.md

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+# Docker images for basic testing
+
+This directory contains a [`Dockerfile`](Dockerfile) for creating Ubuntu
+containers with Python installed and very little else compared to the stock
+Ubuntu images from https://hub.docker.com/_/ubuntu/. These can be used for
+testing TensorFlow Quantum builds in relatively isolated environments.
+
+The script [`create_docker_images.sh`](create_docker_images.sh) creates
+separate images with Python 3.9–3.12 installed in Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04.
+The result is a total of eight images, with names like `ubuntu22-cp39`,
+`ubuntu22-cp310`, etc. The script `create_docker_images.sh` is meant to be run
+simply like this:
+
+```shell
+./create_docker_images.sh
+```
+
+The Dockerfile configuration runs a Bash shell as the last step if a container
+is not started with any other command to run. When combined with Docker's `-v`
+argument, you can easily run commands inside the containere environment while
+accessing your TensorFlow Quantum source files. For example:
+
+```shell
+# The next cd command moves to the root of the source tree.
+cd $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)
+docker run -it --rm --network host -v .:/tfq ubuntu24-cp312
+```
+
+will leave you with a shell prompt inside a basic Ubuntu 24.04 environment with
+Python 3.12 preinstalled and your local TensorFlow Quantum source directory
+accessible at `/tfq` from inside the container.

release/docker/create_docker_images.sh

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+#!/bin/bash
+# Copyright 2025 The TensorFlow Quantum Authors
+#
+# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+# You may obtain a copy of the License at
+#
+#     https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+#
+# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+# limitations under the License.
+# =============================================================================
+
+# Summary: create a set of Docker images for testing TFQ distributions.
+# This loops over a set of Ubuntu versions and Python versions, and builds
+# Docker images using the Dockerfile in this directory.
+#
+# Example of how the resulting images can be run
+#   docker run -it --rm --network host -v .:/tfq ubuntu22-cp39
+
+set -e
+
+declare -a ubuntu_versions=()
+declare -a python_versions=()
+declare -a docker_args=()
+
+ubuntu_versions+=( "22.04" "24.04" )
+python_versions+=( "3.9" "3.10" "3.11" "3.12" )
+total_items=$(( ${#ubuntu_versions[@]} * ${#python_versions[@]}))
+
+echo "~~~~ Building a total of ${total_items} Docker images"
+
+# Flag --no-cache forces containers to be rebuilt.
+docker_args+=( "--no-cache" )
+
+# shellcheck disable=SC2068,SC2145
+for os_version in "${ubuntu_versions[@]}"; do
+    for py_version in "${python_versions[@]}"; do
+        echo
+        echo "~~~~ Python ${py_version} on Ubuntu ${os_version}"
+        docker build \
+            --build-arg PYTHON_VERSION="${py_version}" \
+            --build-arg UBUNTU_VERSION="${os_version}" \
+            ${docker_args[@]}\
+            -t ubuntu${os_version%%.*}-cp${py_version//./}:latest .
+    done
+done
+
+echo
+echo "~~~~ Done. Created the following Docker images:"
+echo
+docker images --filter "reference=ubuntu*-cp*"