valhalla-dev

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for valhalla-dev

Valhalla is an open-source routing engine and accompanying libraries for use with OpenStreetMap data, providing turn-by-turn routing, isochrones, map matching, and matrix computations.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/valhalla-dev:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The valhalla image is comparable to the upstream ghcr.io/valhalla/valhalla image

Image Variants

This module produces three image variants:

Getting Started

Running the Routing Service

To start the Valhalla routing service, you need a configuration file and a tile directory. Create a minimal configuration file:

cat > valhalla.json <<EOF
{
  "mjolnir": {
    "tile_dir": "/tmp/valhalla_tiles"
  },
  "httpd": {
    "service": {
      "listen": "tcp://*:8002",
      "loopback": "ipc:///tmp/loopback",
      "interrupt": "ipc:///tmp/interrupt"
    }
  }
}
EOF

Then start the service:

docker run -d \
  --name valhalla \
  -v "$(pwd)/valhalla.json:/etc/valhalla/valhalla.json:ro" \
  -v /tmp/valhalla_tiles:/tmp/valhalla_tiles \
  -p 8002:8002 \
  --entrypoint valhalla_service \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/valhalla \
  /etc/valhalla/valhalla.json

Verify the service is running by checking the status endpoint:

curl -s http://localhost:8002/status

Using the Scripted Variant

The valhalla-scripted variant includes entrypoint scripts that automate tile building from OpenStreetMap PBF data and service startup. This is the simplest way to get a working routing service with real map data.

First, download an OSM extract (this example uses Monaco, a small dataset suitable for testing):

mkdir -p custom_files
wget -O custom_files/monaco-latest.osm.pbf \
  https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/monaco-latest.osm.pbf

Then start the container with tile building enabled:

docker run -d \
  --name valhalla-scripted \
  -p 8002:8002 \
  -v "$(pwd)/custom_files:/custom_files" \
  -e build_admins=False \
  -e build_time_zones=False \
  -e build_elevation=False \
  -e server_threads=1 \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/valhalla-scripted

The container will build routing tiles from the PBF file and then start the service. Once the service is ready, you can issue a route request:

curl -s http://localhost:8002/route \
  --data-raw '{"locations":[{"lat":43.7311,"lon":7.4197},{"lat":43.7396,"lon":7.4268}],"costing":"auto"}'

The scripted variant supports the following environment variables:

Configuration

Valhalla is configured through a JSON configuration file. The configuration controls service endpoints, routing behavior, service limits, and logging. The upstream source does not provide documentation for this, but we can see the default here.

Key configuration sections include:

• mjolnir — Tile storage directory and caching settings
• httpd — HTTP service binding and connection settings
• loki — Request parsing and available API actions (route, isochrone, trace, etc.)
• thor — Route computation engine settings
• service_limits — Per-mode distance and location limits for API requests

Mount your configuration file into the container at a known path and pass it as an argument to valhalla_service:

docker run -d \
  -v "$(pwd)/valhalla.json:/etc/valhalla/valhalla.json:ro" \
  -v /tmp/valhalla_tiles:/tmp/valhalla_tiles \
  -p 8002:8002 \
  --entrypoint valhalla_service \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/valhalla \
  /etc/valhalla/valhalla.json

Documentation and Resources

• Valhalla GitHub Repository
• Valhalla API Documentation
• OpenStreetMap Data Extracts (Geofabrik)

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

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