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> we often can't easily back out the change. Docker fixes a lot of that. Software can be hard to downgrade. Sometimes dependencies change. Sometimes data model
by xorcist 7y ago
> we often can't easily back out the change. Docker fixes a lot of that.
Software can be hard to downgrade. Sometimes dependencies change. Sometimes data models are migrated one way only. Nobody takes the time to properly test them. Among other things.
How Docker, or any other container packaging format for that matter, could possibly help with that I do not understand. It is not the first time I've heard something like this, but I have never been in a situation where the application packaging was part of this particular problem.
Surely starting the an old version of some software isn't neither harder nor easier with Docker than any other way.
- beat 7y agoThe container contains many dependencies. If designed correctly, I can lock down my dependencies out to the port level. It's not that application packaging is itself the problem... it's that I have control over the environment. I can build a Docker image, test it, and know that is exactly the environment I'll be running in, out to the services level. No worrying about someone upgrading JBoss or the OS or openssl or something without me knowing about it or having any control over it.
- skybrian 7y agoHaving the old Docker image makes it easy to revert to it. Whether this is easier or harder depends on what other way people were doing deployment. Sometimes people don't have good deployment processes that automatically back up whatever they deployed. They might even have installed stuff manually, so they don't know how they did it last time. In that case Docker helps. The build might not be reproducible, but at least you have the binary.