4 ms·

It seems contrary to the purpose of Docker to run ARM Linux on the development machine if the server has an x86 CPU.

by simongray 6y ago

jbverschoor 6y ago
It's only one aspect. But this is good a good thing. ARM instances and servers will be used. #savetheplanet
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  > ARM instances and servers will be used. #savetheplanet You just prolong the agony. Saving the planet means we all go back to middle ages, the rest is feel good wishful thinking.
  - xyst 6y ago
    Off topic but I think we are at the point of no return. Plastic pollution is at its highest with production and use of plastic to increase in significant magnitude by 2050. The main generators of green house gases (US, China) have yet to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. We are constantly over-fishing, over-grazing, deforesting and plunging this earth of its precious resources with reckless abandon to feed our decadence. World War III won’t be a fight over “values” but rather a constant fight over who controls water, energy, and clean air.
    - toyg 6y ago
      World War II wasn't much of a fight over "values" either, that was largely a propaganda device. Certain powers simply wanted more stuff than they already had, and other powers disagreed. Britain declared war when Germany took a Polish port, not when Hitler got in power or when he started rounding up Jews.
      - sesuximo 6y ago
        Britain declared war when hitler took Gdańsk, sure... but after hitler took Czechia and Austria (and funded a coup in Spain). so it’s fair to say Britain’s declaration of war was initially mostly about stopping an expansionist power... but I don’t see how that’s the same as propaganda
    - dathinab 6y ago
      We "always" had been the point of no return. Or at least for the least 20-30 years. Sure theoretically there was long term a way to salvage it. But it was always unrealistic given the large change in economics and society it requires. But there is a difference between a bad and a even worse situation. So just because we can't reach a perfect outcome doesn't mean we shouldn't try to reach a better outcome. Because of this I really don't like arguments like "we are at the point of no return" as it's often used as a argument that supposedly any improvement is pointless. (Through I think you do not mean it that way). I mean the way we are heading will like not directly lead to a extinction of humans, but it might make live unbearable for most of humanity and it also might prevent us from reaching the necessary tech to survive other extinction events. But this also means that "just making thinks a bit better" can in the long term have a major difference even if it won't prevent a climate catastrophe.
  - neolefty 6y ago
    Going back _would_ save the planet, but it's not the only way. There are routes forward, but they require global coordination and creativity. It's hard to imagine because there's no historical precedent, but I think it's worth trying for, and I'm confident it's at least _possible_ we can succeed in transitioning to full sustainability.
- markstos 6y ago
  Adding a sentence to explain how ARM "saves the planet" would perhaps be more effective than a hash tag. I presume you are referring to lower typical power consumption for ARM servers.
dathinab 6y ago
Having a well defined "fixed" environment (i.e. container), which you can also use to "tryout" some stuff without needing any installations on your system makes this already worthwhile.
warp 6y ago
AWS Graviton instances apparently offer better price/performance compared to intel EC2 instances. So there probably is a slow move to ARM for some developers.
wfleming 6y ago
I would hope that most people's production images are being built & pushed to an image repository in CI, not from somebody's laptop. A lot of the official base images on Docker Hub are dual architecture now (both x86-64 and arm64), so if devs on M1 can build arm64 images locally from those, develop on those, and then have CI build the production x86 image, things should be more or less fine. Of course, I'm sure a lot of people rely on 3rd party base images that are still just x86-64. So I expect there's going to be a pretty painful transition period where Docker works on M1 Macs but a lot of popular images don't. Or maybe Docker's official response will be a Docker for Mac release that still runs x86 in a qemu VM or something, and arm64 Docker on M1 Macs will remain an oddity for a while. But I hope they lean into improving tooling for dual-architecture support, because I think we're increasingly moving into a dual architecture world, and not just because of the M1: as ARM becomes more popular in production, I'm sure more people are going to also find themselves in the opposite situation with x86 workstations & arm64 production servers.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  > I would hope that most people's production images are being built & pushed to an image repository in CI, not from somebody's laptop. That's not really the point. Cross-compilation is no problem these days, especially for targets like x86-64. The point is rather that devs will be running the code locally in a completely different environment to production which defeats the purpose of using Docker for development.
  - klelatti 6y ago
    Isn't the point that the environment is very close (and the M1 may be a lot faster than a comparable machine) and that the CI will test the final code on x86 before deployment?
  - jrrrr 6y ago
    It defeats _one_ of the purposes of using Docker for development. I expect that the official M1-supporting Docker Desktop will eventually, given a dual-arch image, allow you to choose which architecture to use. (One would run natively, the other under emulation) There are situations where I'd use this feature, but 90% of the time I'd be fine using arm images locally and deploying x64. (I could also imagine this working the other way -- an x86 dev machine and an arm deployment target -- which I think to some degree is supported by Docker today)
klelatti 6y ago
To be paired with: "I can't run Arm in the cloud because I haven't got an Arm development machine" You have to break into the vicious circle somewhere :)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 6y ago
Containers purpose is not to be CPU agnostic, if you want that use Java, .NET, whatever, and build the container image that pulls the required runtime depending on the host.

It seems contrary to the purpose of Docker to run ARM Linux on the development machine if the server has an x86 CPU.

jbverschoor 6y ago

It's only one aspect. But this is good a good thing. ARM instances and servers will be used. #savetheplanet

jmnicolas 6y ago
> ARM instances and servers will be used. #savetheplanet You just prolong the agony. Saving the planet means we all go back to middle ages, the rest is feel good wishful thinking.
- xyst 6y ago
  Off topic but I think we are at the point of no return. Plastic pollution is at its highest with production and use of plastic to increase in significant magnitude by 2050. The main generators of green house gases (US, China) have yet to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. We are constantly over-fishing, over-grazing, deforesting and plunging this earth of its precious resources with reckless abandon to feed our decadence. World War III won’t be a fight over “values” but rather a constant fight over who controls water, energy, and clean air.
  - toyg 6y ago
    World War II wasn't much of a fight over "values" either, that was largely a propaganda device. Certain powers simply wanted more stuff than they already had, and other powers disagreed. Britain declared war when Germany took a Polish port, not when Hitler got in power or when he started rounding up Jews.
    - sesuximo 6y ago
      Britain declared war when hitler took Gdańsk, sure... but after hitler took Czechia and Austria (and funded a coup in Spain). so it’s fair to say Britain’s declaration of war was initially mostly about stopping an expansionist power... but I don’t see how that’s the same as propaganda
  - dathinab 6y ago
    We "always" had been the point of no return. Or at least for the least 20-30 years. Sure theoretically there was long term a way to salvage it. But it was always unrealistic given the large change in economics and society it requires. But there is a difference between a bad and a even worse situation. So just because we can't reach a perfect outcome doesn't mean we shouldn't try to reach a better outcome. Because of this I really don't like arguments like "we are at the point of no return" as it's often used as a argument that supposedly any improvement is pointless. (Through I think you do not mean it that way). I mean the way we are heading will like not directly lead to a extinction of humans, but it might make live unbearable for most of humanity and it also might prevent us from reaching the necessary tech to survive other extinction events. But this also means that "just making thinks a bit better" can in the long term have a major difference even if it won't prevent a climate catastrophe.
- neolefty 6y ago
  Going back _would_ save the planet, but it's not the only way. There are routes forward, but they require global coordination and creativity. It's hard to imagine because there's no historical precedent, but I think it's worth trying for, and I'm confident it's at least _possible_ we can succeed in transitioning to full sustainability.
markstos 6y ago
Adding a sentence to explain how ARM "saves the planet" would perhaps be more effective than a hash tag. I presume you are referring to lower typical power consumption for ARM servers.

dathinab 6y ago

Having a well defined "fixed" environment (i.e. container), which you can also use to "tryout" some stuff without needing any installations on your system makes this already worthwhile.

warp 6y ago

AWS Graviton instances apparently offer better price/performance compared to intel EC2 instances. So there probably is a slow move to ARM for some developers.

wfleming 6y ago

I would hope that most people's production images are being built & pushed to an image repository in CI, not from somebody's laptop. A lot of the official base images on Docker Hub are dual architecture now (both x86-64 and arm64), so if devs on M1 can build arm64 images locally from those, develop on those, and then have CI build the production x86 image, things should be more or less fine. Of course, I'm sure a lot of people rely on 3rd party base images that are still just x86-64. So I expect there's going to be a pretty painful transition period where Docker works on M1 Macs but a lot of popular images don't. Or maybe Docker's official response will be a Docker for Mac release that still runs x86 in a qemu VM or something, and arm64 Docker on M1 Macs will remain an oddity for a while. But I hope they lean into improving tooling for dual-architecture support, because I think we're increasingly moving into a dual architecture world, and not just because of the M1: as ARM becomes more popular in production, I'm sure more people are going to also find themselves in the opposite situation with x86 workstations & arm64 production servers.

globular-toast 6y ago
> I would hope that most people's production images are being built & pushed to an image repository in CI, not from somebody's laptop. That's not really the point. Cross-compilation is no problem these days, especially for targets like x86-64. The point is rather that devs will be running the code locally in a completely different environment to production which defeats the purpose of using Docker for development.
- klelatti 6y ago
  Isn't the point that the environment is very close (and the M1 may be a lot faster than a comparable machine) and that the CI will test the final code on x86 before deployment?
- jrrrr 6y ago
  It defeats _one_ of the purposes of using Docker for development. I expect that the official M1-supporting Docker Desktop will eventually, given a dual-arch image, allow you to choose which architecture to use. (One would run natively, the other under emulation) There are situations where I'd use this feature, but 90% of the time I'd be fine using arm images locally and deploying x64. (I could also imagine this working the other way -- an x86 dev machine and an arm deployment target -- which I think to some degree is supported by Docker today)

klelatti 6y ago

To be paired with: "I can't run Arm in the cloud because I haven't got an Arm development machine" You have to break into the vicious circle somewhere :)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pjmlp 6y ago

Containers purpose is not to be CPU agnostic, if you want that use Java, .NET, whatever, and build the container image that pulls the required runtime depending on the host.