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What exactly is wrong with docker on embedded systems? Many have the memory and storage to afford containers and existing established distros like yocto are not

by kanox 6y ago

What exactly is wrong with docker on embedded systems? Many have the memory and storage to afford containers and existing established distros like yocto are not very good. I'd much rather deal with Dockerfiles than buildbake.

turbinerneiter 6y ago
What is the problem docker solves?
Obsnold 6y ago
Just to clarify yocto is not a distro but a project that allows you to create your own custom distro. Two yocto builds could be completely different from one another even using different package managers.
- kanox 6y ago
  Yocto and various derivatives can be used to "build software" in the same way that Dockerfiles can be used to "build software" but using yocto is a much worse experience.
rcxdude 6y ago
I actually think yocto solves the problem better then docker in many ways. Yocto goes to a large amount of effort to make for repeatable builds, something which docker is actually quite bad at for all that it is touted as a solution for not being able to replicate someone else's setup. I think nix actually represents the next useful stop here: it avoids just piling another layer of abstraction/virtualisation on the pile and actually reinvents the package manager in a way which actually solves the problems docker exists to solve but in a more complete manner. Bitbake I think actually represents a much messier implementation of the same ideas: just like nix uses a functional language to express package configuration, so too have bitbake files grown the same kind of functionality. The main things which bring bitbake down are the language is ridiculously quirky, hard to debug, poorly documented, and has any number of soundness holes (as well as a good amount of action-at-a-distance akin to INTERCAL's COMEFROM statement which is simultaneously really useful and really frustrating)
- kanox 6y ago
  > Yocto goes to a large amount of effort to make for repeatable builds, something which docker is actually quite bad at Is this something that yocto itself helps with or just something accomplished by a thousand people hacking at .bb scripts? Last I checked features like the sstate cache came with big caveats. Dockerfile layer caching seems much more effective at shrinking build times.

by kanox 6y ago

turbinerneiter 6y ago

What is the problem docker solves?

Obsnold 6y ago

Just to clarify yocto is not a distro but a project that allows you to create your own custom distro. Two yocto builds could be completely different from one another even using different package managers.

kanox 6y ago
Yocto and various derivatives can be used to "build software" in the same way that Dockerfiles can be used to "build software" but using yocto is a much worse experience.

rcxdude 6y ago

I actually think yocto solves the problem better then docker in many ways. Yocto goes to a large amount of effort to make for repeatable builds, something which docker is actually quite bad at for all that it is touted as a solution for not being able to replicate someone else's setup. I think nix actually represents the next useful stop here: it avoids just piling another layer of abstraction/virtualisation on the pile and actually reinvents the package manager in a way which actually solves the problems docker exists to solve but in a more complete manner. Bitbake I think actually represents a much messier implementation of the same ideas: just like nix uses a functional language to express package configuration, so too have bitbake files grown the same kind of functionality. The main things which bring bitbake down are the language is ridiculously quirky, hard to debug, poorly documented, and has any number of soundness holes (as well as a good amount of action-at-a-distance akin to INTERCAL's COMEFROM statement which is simultaneously really useful and really frustrating)

kanox 6y ago
> Yocto goes to a large amount of effort to make for repeatable builds, something which docker is actually quite bad at Is this something that yocto itself helps with or just something accomplished by a thousand people hacking at .bb scripts? Last I checked features like the sstate cache came with big caveats. Dockerfile layer caching seems much more effective at shrinking build times.