4 ms·

These days it seems that Docker is everywhere. I am new to docker and I seem to find it as one more additional complicated system that the developer now needs t

These days it seems that Docker is everywhere. I am new to docker and I seem to find it as one more additional complicated system that the developer now needs to learn in order to deploy his or her application. How useful do you find docker for application which can be deployed on Heroku or Beanstalk? I can understand using docker for a Language ecosystem which is not supported on Public PaaS. Or for people for whom public PaaS is not an option. I would like to know about the experience of using Docker in day to day development from people who have used Docker in team environments. How was your experience of converting the team to use Docker instead of their regular development/deployment? For example, at our company, For LAMP or MEAN or Java Stacks, we have a defined a procedure of setting up the dev machines to include all these tools and developers know how to manage these on their own machine. Once the code is pushed to Jenkins, there are deploy scripts written by tech leads which take care of deployment to various servers or to Heroku. In your Docker driven development process, did everybody started using docker on their development machine too? Or everybody just kept using their local setup, and only one/two people handled the task of creating final docker images? Or do you just use you CI server to handle the docker image creation and deployment from that point onwards?

trey-jones 10y ago
I am also pretty new to docker and it took a few days to get my head into it, but I am using it mainly as a contained dev environment, similar to the way we use vagrant. I am finding that docker is much better suited to complex environments, and a lot easier to update. Contrary to your fears of everyone having to learn docker to develop, I see it as a tool that allows every developer on a team to be brought into new technology without having to learn all about a new toolchain. We are using docker-compose for this. Everyone has to install docker, and have some cursory knowledge of docker-compose commands, but that's it. As an example, I recently shoehorned an angular2 front end into an existing project. Without docker, this means every developer needs node and all the dependencies before they begin to work. With docker-compose, the next time they start up the environment, the npm container installs all of their dependencies, and the typescript compiler container listens and compiles all changes to the webroot. The other developers don't even need to know what node is, or that it's being used! Docker is a very powerful tool with a lot of untapped potential I'm sure. I've no experience with docker in production, however.
brown9-2 10y ago
In your Docker driven development process, did everybody started using docker on their development machine too? Yes. The build scripts produce an image as well as a JAR. It doesn't do anyone any good to have the knowledge of how to package your code for production locked in just a few people's heads.

trey-jones 10y ago

I am also pretty new to docker and it took a few days to get my head into it, but I am using it mainly as a contained dev environment, similar to the way we use vagrant. I am finding that docker is much better suited to complex environments, and a lot easier to update. Contrary to your fears of everyone having to learn docker to develop, I see it as a tool that allows every developer on a team to be brought into new technology without having to learn all about a new toolchain. We are using docker-compose for this. Everyone has to install docker, and have some cursory knowledge of docker-compose commands, but that's it. As an example, I recently shoehorned an angular2 front end into an existing project. Without docker, this means every developer needs node and all the dependencies before they begin to work. With docker-compose, the next time they start up the environment, the npm container installs all of their dependencies, and the typescript compiler container listens and compiles all changes to the webroot. The other developers don't even need to know what node is, or that it's being used! Docker is a very powerful tool with a lot of untapped potential I'm sure. I've no experience with docker in production, however.

brown9-2 10y ago

In your Docker driven development process, did everybody started using docker on their development machine too? Yes. The build scripts produce an image as well as a JAR. It doesn't do anyone any good to have the knowledge of how to package your code for production locked in just a few people's heads.