This container is intended to run on demand containers, primarily to play rosbags

But is possibly to use it in other applications.

This container look in the root for a catkin_ws and source it.

One way to storage a catkin_ws is create a ros data-container and initialize a workspace (later you are able to make backups of the data container)

docker run -v /catkin_ws --name ros-ckws-data ros:kinetic 

And then initialize the workspace in a new container:

docker run -it --volumes-from ros-ckws-data ros

For example, you are able to play a rosbag, and then rosbridge will publish the topics

docker run -it --rm --volumes-from ros-ckws-data -v myRosbagFilesPath:/rosbag -w /rosbag rosbridge rosbag play -l whatever.bag