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I'm not a heavy docker user but why can't I develop docker containers on Arm (as native containers, no emulation) and deploy to x86_64? Or vice versa? I underst

by quux 6y ago

I'm not a heavy docker user but why can't I develop docker containers on Arm (as native containers, no emulation) and deploy to x86_64? Or vice versa? I understand that some packages are binary only and wouldn't be necessarily available for Arm, especially initially, but the majority should be.

icedchai 6y ago
You can. Because of the Raspberry Pi and other ARM SBCs, the most popular base images already run on ARM. The ones that are missing will catch up pretty fast.
Teknoman117 6y ago
It's not that you can't, you just have to be mindful. Because docker containers contain compiled applications, you have to be aware of what CPU architecture they're compiled for. ARM can't natively run x86 binaries, x86 can't natively run ARM binaries. If you want to develop containers for x86 systems on an ARM system, you'll have to cross compile your containers, which I'm not sure if docker actually supports outside of emulation. If you are only a consumer of containers, most of the popular ones have been compiled for multiple architectures.