# The "mybinder.org, deconstructed" guide
**URL:** https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/the-mybinder-org-deconstructed-guide/212
**Category:** discuss
**Created:** [November 27, 2018, 7:00am UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/the-mybinder-org-deconstructed-guide/212 "2018-11-27T07:00:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@betatim](https://discourse.jupyter.org/u/betatim)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2018, 7:00am UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/the-mybinder-org-deconstructed-guide/212/1 "2018-11-27T07:00:51Z")
> [@What would a repo2docker GUI look like?](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/what-would-a-repo2docker-gui-look-like/205/7):
>
> Based on my experience the hardest things with r2d is how to get the configurations right so it builds
Is this a question of discovering the right configuration file that let’s you solve your problem (“I need to set environment variables when this container starts, how do I do that?”)? Or a question of getting all the right packages to play nicely together? Or a third thing?
> [@What would a repo2docker GUI look like?](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/what-would-a-repo2docker-gui-look-like/205/7):
>
> how to run r2d on whatever cloud service you want since we don’t have that documented
I think this is at least a two step problem:
1. how do I launch and configure a VM on cloud hoster X so that it has a docker daemon I can
use
2. how do I connect to the running notebook/RStudio session on that remote VM from my local computer
Is there a third angle to this? I think we could start to address this with a “Howto” style guide in the documentation. My feeling is that we should find existing tools/guides for question 1 as we can’t maintain docs for all the various cloud hosters ourselves. For question 2 I think the answer is generic so we can add it to the FAQ and a Howto guide. What do you think?
Maybe we should break this thread out into a new topic: “The hard things about using repo2docker” or some such?
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### Author:  [@minrk](https://discourse.jupyter.org/u/minrk)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2018, 9:20am UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/the-mybinder-org-deconstructed-guide/212/2 "2018-11-28T09:20:46Z")
Yeah, I think separate app is definitely the way to go. In the same way that [mybinder.org](http://mybinder.org) is a web service built on repo2docker’s cli, this would be a local gui app built on repo2docker, consuming its api (could be via cli or python).
> [@What would a repo2docker GUI look like?](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/what-would-a-repo2docker-gui-look-like/205/9):
>
> Is there a third angle to this?
When dealing with ephemeral cloud resources, pushing to a private registry is probably sensible to include, so you can build once and run several times. I’d almost call this a “[mybinder.org](http://mybinder.org), deconstructed” guide. It’s everything Binder does, but taken as more manual steps on your own terms:
1. request cloud resources
2. build image with repo2docker (requires installing docker)
3. store image in a registry for future use (requires registry credentials; `docker login` being the easiest)
4. launch a container from the image
5. connect to the running notebook (might require cloud firewall configuration)
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### Author:  [@betatim](https://discourse.jupyter.org/u/betatim)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2018, 10:34am UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/the-mybinder-org-deconstructed-guide/212/3 "2018-11-28T10:34:25Z")
(we are now in a new topic, mostly because I wanted to experiment with the feature. Let’s see if this was a good idea or not.)
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### Author:  [@betatim](https://discourse.jupyter.org/u/betatim)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2018, 6:59pm UTC](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/the-mybinder-org-deconstructed-guide/212/4 "2018-11-28T18:59:10Z")
What is the status, support and adoption like for `docker-machine` these days? It seems like it could be a good way to get a machine that runs `dockerd` in the cloud and run containers on it.
[https://docs.docker.com/machine/get-started-cloud/](https://docs.docker.com/machine/get-started-cloud/) tells me that I should be looking at “docker cloud” but all I see when I follow the link is my private docker hub registry :-/