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Setting Up a Software Development Environment on Alpine Linux

110 points by quickthrower2 8y ago

turtlegrids 8y ago
This is thoroughly good stuff. Thanks to the author for the work they put into this.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
vector_spaces 8y ago
I have Alpine+gnome running on my little Dell Inspiron 5000 and I love it. It's super snappy where even Lubuntu was sluggish. There are some missing luxuries like obconf and Emacs gui, but I mainly use it for browsing and sshing into Debian servers where I can just use vim anyway. It was actually really straightforward to setup, too.
folkrav 8y ago
Neat guide, but I really don't understand why you'd even want Alpine as a daily driver, unless you're _really_ limited on performance.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Like emulating x86 on iOS[1], for example? [1]: https://github.com/tbodt/ish https://github.com/tbodt/ish
  - maxaf 8y ago
    Something about using the words “emulating x86 on iOS” and “daily driver” together doesn’t sit right with me...
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  It's a simple, elegant system that does what I need. And needing so little resources really makes a difference even when you have a more powerful machine.
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  Agree— the justification given in the article is needing the environment set up in order to port some software to it, but you don't need a development environment for that, only a build environment. Using containers or even just a chroot (https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installing_Alpine_Linux_in_a_chroot https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installing_Alpine_Linux_in...) would be far more straight forward. Now, if you want to try native Alpine as your desktop just for the fun of it, that's fine, but it's going to be a pretty constrained environment, and may not have been worth the several hours it took to get it going.
erikw 8y ago
I like to set up mini dev environments in Alpine Docker containers when I'm testing or trying out a new stack, and for the most part really like this pattern. That said, I run into a lot of issues that I think are musl related. The best part though is that when I finally get things working, everything is documented nice and declaratively between the Dockerfile and the docker-compose file, so I can come back to it later or clone it for a different project and it just works.
- sandov 8y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, but what's the nature of these musl-related issues? Is it because some programs or libraries use glibc specific-features/bugs? Or is it something else? Does glibc have their own non-standard functions?
  - tyingq 8y ago
    Pre built jvm binaries that are dynamically linked to glibc are an example. "At present, some glibc-linked shared libraries can be loaded with musl, but all but the simplest glibc-linked applications will fail if musl is dropped-in in place of /lib/ld-linux.so.2" https://www.musl-libc.org/faq.html https://www.musl-libc.org/faq.html Some of the differences are listed here: https://wiki.musl-libc.org/functional-differences-from-glibc.html https://wiki.musl-libc.org/functional-differences-from-glibc...
    - kristianp 8y ago
      That reminded me that I noticed from the java 12 link on the front page, that they mention early access builds of java 13 for alpine. https://jdk.java.net/13/ https://jdk.java.net/13/
a-nikolaev 8y ago
Can anyone compare Alpine Linux with Void Linux, their pros and cons?
- evil-olive 8y ago
  I don't claim to be an expert, but my understanding is that Alpine is mainly focused on small size, so musl libc, lack of systemd, etc, are means to that end. Void seems to be more focused on power user experience, in the vein of Gentoo / Arch. So glibc or musl as an option, lack of systemd, and a pacman-like package manager (xbps) are all means to that end. Alpine gets lots of usage as a Docker base layer due to that small size. Void certainly could be used as a Docker base image, but that's much less common than Alpine because the image sizes are probably roughly comparable to Debian and when running in a container the systemd vs not-systemd choice becomes less relevant.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  Void: Rolling release, musl and glibc variants. Alpine: Stable releases that are supported 2 years, musl-only. EDIT: Oops, forgot that "edge" is a rolling release. I personally prefer Void for desktop and Alpine for servers/containers/appliances, but either could be used for either.
mbell 8y ago
Is there a distro comparable to Alpine but based on glibc? I'm aware of various workarounds / hacks for glibc support in Alpine, just curious if there is a distro that doesn't have the issue out of the box.
- Propolice 8y ago
  Void (Linux) has glibc and musl flavors.
- mappu 8y ago
  Debian? For upthread comparison, the debian:stable-slim container is 22MB. That includes perl, tzdata, apt, bash, coreutils/util-linux and... basically nothing else. It's a very minimal rootfs that can still be easily extended. (The standalone perl docker image is over 300MB.)
deathanatos 8y ago
> Ubuntu is 188 MB Ubuntu is 88MB: ubuntu bionic 47b19964fb50 5 weeks ago 88.1MB Definitely not Alpine levels of small, sure, but the size in the article is off by a digit. But not that big, either, and I find a huge number of devs are more familiar with Ubuntu. I'm also throwing Python into the container, so the base container size is very quickly dwarfed by that. I think if you're using something like golang or Rust, the gains would be a lot more meaningful.
- gtaylor 8y ago
  The images get even smaller after Bionic!
  - deathanatos 8y ago
    That's great to hear. I quoted Bionic simply b/c it's the LTS, and a lot of places (mine included) only use those. (It is honestly hard enough to get people to take the time to upgrade between those. We had finally gotten the last bits off precise I feel like when bionic came out.)
- saltyhitler 8y ago
  Not sure why the obsession with OS size. I don't mind having a 1GB OS that has really good functionality vs a 50MB one that has none. I do want size to be a factor for server based images which is a different beast altogether.
  - yata01 8y ago
    In some cases, I think users may want that 50 MB OS so that they can add functionality as they need it. Sure, the 1 GB OS comes with some neat built in functionality, but how much of that is unnecessary for your use cases?
    - coldacid 8y ago
      I think that comes in under GP's exception for server images.
catern 8y ago
It's quite ironic that the biggest usage of Alpine, a distro whose tagline is "Alpine Linux is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox.", is Docker, which is an almost completely opposite technology: vastly overcomplicated, insecure, and bloated. I'd be interested to hear what the Alpine maintainers think of their biggest user...
- aero142 8y ago
  People believe that security is like salt. Just sprinkle it on top and it somehow makes the whole thing better.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Aren’t minimalist operating systems often meant to run as guests under more complicated virtualization layers? Limited driver support, for example, can be an important part of the minimalism.
- jcrites 8y ago
  > I'd be interested to hear what the Alpine maintainers think of their biggest user... The creator of Alpine Linux, Natanael Copa, reportedly went to work for Docker, so presumably Natanael thinks it's a reasonable use-case. Solomon Hykes, Docker's CTO at the time, posted about it on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11000827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11000827 Alpine Linux, as I understand it, strives to be a lightweight and minimalist distribution of Linux. That's exactly what you'd want to run as a container, assuming you are going to run a Linux distribution and one that's different than the production host system.
- raesene9 8y ago
  out of curiousity, where you say Docker is "insecure" what specific aspects of Docker were you thinking of?
  - lojack 8y ago
    The docker daemon runs as a privileged user, so if you're able to break out of the container (which has been shown possible recently) then you can compromise the entire host OS.
aswanson 8y ago
What does devops mean? I keep seeing that word.
- obpacheco 8y ago
  "DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market." From AWS's What is Devops? https://aws.amazon.com/devops/what-is-devops/ https://aws.amazon.com/devops/what-is-devops/
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  If you're a low-level employee, it means someone who hooks up Jenkins to other crap. If you're a manager, it's a position you're hiring for. If you're upper management or executive, it's a methodology to solve business problems and improve output. If you're C-level, it's a cool buzz word.
  - quickthrower2 8y ago
    This is a cynical and funny comment, but I see from your profile you have a wiki with a good definition that’s probably worth linking to (https://devops.yoga/overview.html https://devops.yoga/overview.html).
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - hestefisk 8y ago
      C-suite porn.
      - peterwwillis 8y ago
        They'd never get off, there's no pie charts
Scarbutt 8y ago
Regarding the Java notes in the article, the announcement of Java 12 today had this: "The Alpine Linux build previously available on this page was removed as of JDK 12 GA. It’s not production-ready because it hasn’t been tested thoroughly enough to be considered a GA build. Please use the early-access JDK 13 Alpine Linux build in its place."
peterwwillis 8y ago
Can anyone explain what the deal is with companies who have 1000 general blog posts, and then separately, a product they're selling? Is it just to bring in traffic that will hopefully buy their product?
- jbigelow76 8y ago
  Yes mostly, but it might also be considered a very roundabout evergreen recruiting advertisement, "Oh look they are using X and Y to build Z! I bet that would be a cool place to work if the opportunity arose."
- antod 8y ago
  More like try and attract potential employees by seeming cool and working on interesting problems
- rozenmd 8y ago
  More posts -> more backlinks -> higher domain authority -> higher search result ranking in search engines
morevasri 8y ago
Slightly off-topic question: I use Windows as my OS of choice. If I want to run my browser in a Linux VM via Virtualbox, would Alpine be a good choice? Or is there something even better/lighter?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
interfixus 8y ago
Alpine is magic. No fluff, no bloat, simple really, really well-designed setup- and package-tools. Including a full OS installation and setup, I can go from blank machine (or vps) to functioning, customized server in less than ten minutes if I absolutely have to. Good repos with everything I could ask for. Oh, and OpenRC, no systemd nonsense. I need really convincing reasons to ever build a server on anything else.

110 points by quickthrower2 8y ago

turtlegrids 8y ago

This is thoroughly good stuff. Thanks to the author for the work they put into this.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

vector_spaces 8y ago

I have Alpine+gnome running on my little Dell Inspiron 5000 and I love it. It's super snappy where even Lubuntu was sluggish. There are some missing luxuries like obconf and Emacs gui, but I mainly use it for browsing and sshing into Debian servers where I can just use vim anyway. It was actually really straightforward to setup, too.

folkrav 8y ago

Neat guide, but I really don't understand why you'd even want Alpine as a daily driver, unless you're _really_ limited on performance.

saagarjha 8y ago
Like emulating x86 on iOS[1], for example? [1]: https://github.com/tbodt/ish https://github.com/tbodt/ish
- maxaf 8y ago
  Something about using the words “emulating x86 on iOS” and “daily driver” together doesn’t sit right with me...
yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
It's a simple, elegant system that does what I need. And needing so little resources really makes a difference even when you have a more powerful machine.
mikepurvis 8y ago
Agree— the justification given in the article is needing the environment set up in order to port some software to it, but you don't need a development environment for that, only a build environment. Using containers or even just a chroot (https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installing_Alpine_Linux_in_a_chroot https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Installing_Alpine_Linux_in...) would be far more straight forward. Now, if you want to try native Alpine as your desktop just for the fun of it, that's fine, but it's going to be a pretty constrained environment, and may not have been worth the several hours it took to get it going.

erikw 8y ago

I like to set up mini dev environments in Alpine Docker containers when I'm testing or trying out a new stack, and for the most part really like this pattern. That said, I run into a lot of issues that I think are musl related. The best part though is that when I finally get things working, everything is documented nice and declaratively between the Dockerfile and the docker-compose file, so I can come back to it later or clone it for a different project and it just works.

sandov 8y ago
Pardon my ignorance, but what's the nature of these musl-related issues? Is it because some programs or libraries use glibc specific-features/bugs? Or is it something else? Does glibc have their own non-standard functions?
- tyingq 8y ago
  Pre built jvm binaries that are dynamically linked to glibc are an example. "At present, some glibc-linked shared libraries can be loaded with musl, but all but the simplest glibc-linked applications will fail if musl is dropped-in in place of /lib/ld-linux.so.2" https://www.musl-libc.org/faq.html https://www.musl-libc.org/faq.html Some of the differences are listed here: https://wiki.musl-libc.org/functional-differences-from-glibc.html https://wiki.musl-libc.org/functional-differences-from-glibc...
  - kristianp 8y ago
    That reminded me that I noticed from the java 12 link on the front page, that they mention early access builds of java 13 for alpine. https://jdk.java.net/13/ https://jdk.java.net/13/

a-nikolaev 8y ago

Can anyone compare Alpine Linux with Void Linux, their pros and cons?

evil-olive 8y ago
I don't claim to be an expert, but my understanding is that Alpine is mainly focused on small size, so musl libc, lack of systemd, etc, are means to that end. Void seems to be more focused on power user experience, in the vein of Gentoo / Arch. So glibc or musl as an option, lack of systemd, and a pacman-like package manager (xbps) are all means to that end. Alpine gets lots of usage as a Docker base layer due to that small size. Void certainly could be used as a Docker base image, but that's much less common than Alpine because the image sizes are probably roughly comparable to Debian and when running in a container the systemd vs not-systemd choice becomes less relevant.
yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
Void: Rolling release, musl and glibc variants. Alpine: Stable releases that are supported 2 years, musl-only. EDIT: Oops, forgot that "edge" is a rolling release. I personally prefer Void for desktop and Alpine for servers/containers/appliances, but either could be used for either.

mbell 8y ago

Is there a distro comparable to Alpine but based on glibc? I'm aware of various workarounds / hacks for glibc support in Alpine, just curious if there is a distro that doesn't have the issue out of the box.

Propolice 8y ago
Void (Linux) has glibc and musl flavors.
mappu 8y ago
Debian? For upthread comparison, the debian:stable-slim container is 22MB. That includes perl, tzdata, apt, bash, coreutils/util-linux and... basically nothing else. It's a very minimal rootfs that can still be easily extended. (The standalone perl docker image is over 300MB.)

deathanatos 8y ago

> Ubuntu is 188 MB Ubuntu is 88MB: ubuntu bionic 47b19964fb50 5 weeks ago 88.1MB Definitely not Alpine levels of small, sure, but the size in the article is off by a digit. But not that big, either, and I find a huge number of devs are more familiar with Ubuntu. I'm also throwing Python into the container, so the base container size is very quickly dwarfed by that. I think if you're using something like golang or Rust, the gains would be a lot more meaningful.

gtaylor 8y ago
The images get even smaller after Bionic!
- deathanatos 8y ago
  That's great to hear. I quoted Bionic simply b/c it's the LTS, and a lot of places (mine included) only use those. (It is honestly hard enough to get people to take the time to upgrade between those. We had finally gotten the last bits off precise I feel like when bionic came out.)
saltyhitler 8y ago
Not sure why the obsession with OS size. I don't mind having a 1GB OS that has really good functionality vs a 50MB one that has none. I do want size to be a factor for server based images which is a different beast altogether.
- yata01 8y ago
  In some cases, I think users may want that 50 MB OS so that they can add functionality as they need it. Sure, the 1 GB OS comes with some neat built in functionality, but how much of that is unnecessary for your use cases?
  - coldacid 8y ago
    I think that comes in under GP's exception for server images.

catern 8y ago

It's quite ironic that the biggest usage of Alpine, a distro whose tagline is "Alpine Linux is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox.", is Docker, which is an almost completely opposite technology: vastly overcomplicated, insecure, and bloated. I'd be interested to hear what the Alpine maintainers think of their biggest user...

aero142 8y ago
People believe that security is like salt. Just sprinkle it on top and it somehow makes the whole thing better.
closeparen 8y ago
Aren’t minimalist operating systems often meant to run as guests under more complicated virtualization layers? Limited driver support, for example, can be an important part of the minimalism.
jcrites 8y ago
> I'd be interested to hear what the Alpine maintainers think of their biggest user... The creator of Alpine Linux, Natanael Copa, reportedly went to work for Docker, so presumably Natanael thinks it's a reasonable use-case. Solomon Hykes, Docker's CTO at the time, posted about it on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11000827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11000827 Alpine Linux, as I understand it, strives to be a lightweight and minimalist distribution of Linux. That's exactly what you'd want to run as a container, assuming you are going to run a Linux distribution and one that's different than the production host system.
raesene9 8y ago
out of curiousity, where you say Docker is "insecure" what specific aspects of Docker were you thinking of?
- lojack 8y ago
  The docker daemon runs as a privileged user, so if you're able to break out of the container (which has been shown possible recently) then you can compromise the entire host OS.

aswanson 8y ago

What does devops mean? I keep seeing that word.

obpacheco 8y ago
"DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market." From AWS's What is Devops? https://aws.amazon.com/devops/what-is-devops/ https://aws.amazon.com/devops/what-is-devops/
peterwwillis 8y ago
If you're a low-level employee, it means someone who hooks up Jenkins to other crap. If you're a manager, it's a position you're hiring for. If you're upper management or executive, it's a methodology to solve business problems and improve output. If you're C-level, it's a cool buzz word.
- quickthrower2 8y ago
  This is a cynical and funny comment, but I see from your profile you have a wiki with a good definition that’s probably worth linking to (https://devops.yoga/overview.html https://devops.yoga/overview.html).
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - hestefisk 8y ago
    C-suite porn.
    - peterwwillis 8y ago
      They'd never get off, there's no pie charts

Scarbutt 8y ago

Regarding the Java notes in the article, the announcement of Java 12 today had this: "The Alpine Linux build previously available on this page was removed as of JDK 12 GA. It’s not production-ready because it hasn’t been tested thoroughly enough to be considered a GA build. Please use the early-access JDK 13 Alpine Linux build in its place."

peterwwillis 8y ago

Can anyone explain what the deal is with companies who have 1000 general blog posts, and then separately, a product they're selling? Is it just to bring in traffic that will hopefully buy their product?

jbigelow76 8y ago
Yes mostly, but it might also be considered a very roundabout evergreen recruiting advertisement, "Oh look they are using X and Y to build Z! I bet that would be a cool place to work if the opportunity arose."
antod 8y ago
More like try and attract potential employees by seeming cool and working on interesting problems
rozenmd 8y ago
More posts -> more backlinks -> higher domain authority -> higher search result ranking in search engines

morevasri 8y ago

Slightly off-topic question: I use Windows as my OS of choice. If I want to run my browser in a Linux VM via Virtualbox, would Alpine be a good choice? Or is there something even better/lighter?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

interfixus 8y ago

Alpine is magic. No fluff, no bloat, simple really, really well-designed setup- and package-tools. Including a full OS installation and setup, I can go from blank machine (or vps) to functioning, customized server in less than ten minutes if I absolutely have to. Good repos with everything I could ask for. Oh, and OpenRC, no systemd nonsense. I need really convincing reasons to ever build a server on anything else.