4 ms·

Using Nix with Dockerfiles

31 points by rrampage 3y ago

dan0000 3y ago
I think this is something the writer of the article would be delighted to find: https://github.com/railwayapp/nixpacks https://github.com/railwayapp/nixpacks
bfrog 3y ago
I actually used nix in place of dockerfiles to build docker images, as it helped produce a perfectly minimal image for N architectures without much effort.
- rgoulter 3y ago
  Could you elaborate? How much effort had to go into the Nix expression to make the image smaller, compared to what you'd do with a Dockerfile? I'm guessing you / your team is otherwise already familiar with Nix?
  - bfrog 3y ago
    It was near effortless, using the nix dockerTools. The hard part was packaging up all the horrible C++ dependencies involved. I followed the guide here https://nixos.org/guides/building-and-running-docker-images.html https://nixos.org/guides/building-and-running-docker-images.... I ended up with an expression that built an image with my program that took the arch as a parameter. You can see it here https://github.com/openenergysolutions/openfmb.adapters/blob/develop/all.nix https://github.com/openenergysolutions/openfmb.adapters/blob... and dig in if you like.
rgoulter 3y ago
> Use a Dockerfile and the official Nix image to build your application using Nix using roughly one shell command. I'd misread the title, & thought this would be about using nixpkgs' dockerTools. https://nix.dev/tutorials/building-and-running-docker-images https://nix.dev/tutorials/building-and-running-docker-images I would assume that the resulting image is about the same, but you wouldn't need a bespoke Dockerfile. The downsides being that you'd need to know nix to maintain it (which you would anyway with this approach), and you'd need `nix` rather than `docker` to build the image.
3836293648 3y ago
> I'm serious, I haven't had a "works on my machine [but not on others]" issue in years. Not a single one. Clearly you haven't touched OpenGL. Nix apps on non-nixos need a wrapper to use OpenGL and what's worse is that you need a different wrapper for each GPU vendor

31 points by rrampage 3y ago

I think this is something the writer of the article would be delighted to find: https://github.com/railwayapp/nixpacks https://github.com/railwayapp/nixpacks

bfrog 3y ago

I actually used nix in place of dockerfiles to build docker images, as it helped produce a perfectly minimal image for N architectures without much effort.

rgoulter 3y ago
Could you elaborate? How much effort had to go into the Nix expression to make the image smaller, compared to what you'd do with a Dockerfile? I'm guessing you / your team is otherwise already familiar with Nix?
- bfrog 3y ago
  It was near effortless, using the nix dockerTools. The hard part was packaging up all the horrible C++ dependencies involved. I followed the guide here https://nixos.org/guides/building-and-running-docker-images.html https://nixos.org/guides/building-and-running-docker-images.... I ended up with an expression that built an image with my program that took the arch as a parameter. You can see it here https://github.com/openenergysolutions/openfmb.adapters/blob/develop/all.nix https://github.com/openenergysolutions/openfmb.adapters/blob... and dig in if you like.

rgoulter 3y ago

> Use a Dockerfile and the official Nix image to build your application using Nix using roughly one shell command. I'd misread the title, & thought this would be about using nixpkgs' dockerTools. https://nix.dev/tutorials/building-and-running-docker-images https://nix.dev/tutorials/building-and-running-docker-images I would assume that the resulting image is about the same, but you wouldn't need a bespoke Dockerfile. The downsides being that you'd need to know nix to maintain it (which you would anyway with this approach), and you'd need `nix` rather than `docker` to build the image.

3836293648 3y ago

> I'm serious, I haven't had a "works on my machine [but not on others]" issue in years. Not a single one. Clearly you haven't touched OpenGL. Nix apps on non-nixos need a wrapper to use OpenGL and what's worse is that you need a different wrapper for each GPU vendor