Yay! Good steps (in the Java ecosystem at least) to bring containers closer to their potential. Docker is the best example I know of how "worse is better" can

Yay! Good steps (in the Java ecosystem at least) to bring containers closer to their potential. Docker is the best example I know of how "worse is better" can lead to absurdly bad local maxima. Docker solves the most shallow and most obvious problems of software deployment: How to package all dependencies in one big ball of mud. Instead of declaring dependencies explicitly (with acceptable version ranges like maven, bundler, even nvm can do for ages) we get the equivalent of a bash script (Dockerfile) that is impossible to parse automatically and encourages volatile external dependencies (`curl http://mirror.com/current_version.sh http://mirror.com/current_version.sh | bash`) Instead of slim, reproducible build descriptions that could reference single files or packages via hash sums (ala `packages.lockfile`) we get fat filesystems with the caching granularity of snapshots. But why care, developers have multi terabyte SSDs and gigabit network connections by now, right? Instead of being able to propagate security updates down to each package (/container), we have a filesystem snapshot caching, where cache invalidation is for all intends and purposes impossible. But cache invalidation is hard, so how could you blame docker? And I get why Dockerfiles are so seductive: They are damn easy. You can build your first docker image in minutes. But also docker doesn't help you to solve any of the deeper problems for you. E.g. you better figure out how to invalidate your cached image layers yourself when packages get security updates. Or just rebuild everything all the time, but there goes your performance and maybe some of those pesky external dependencies are no longer available. Want to internalize those? Build that yourself, too, docker can't help you there, because it is too damn simple. So, Horray to Jib! All the work that has already gone into Maven to solve the deeper problems (e.g. internalizing external dependencies with Nexus) can be repurposed to build container images. Let's hope we get more of that "more complex but better" sanity.