4 ms·

Why do you use the docker image instead of just the normal executable?

• michaelcampbell 3y ago
  I'd reckon it's partly habit, but it is a very nice way of "installing" something easily and being able to also very easily _uninstall_ it without leaving any cruft behind, as well as having completely disparate multiple versions of things, if you need that. For single-file binaries this is less of an issue, but even those sometimes require dependencies that you already have something else that needs a different version of that same dependency causing conflict.
  • mekster 3y ago
    What distro doesn't have pandoc in its package manager?
    • michaelcampbell 3y ago
      I was speaking more generally, not pandoc in particular. But even with packages in a manager, there have been times where different packages conflict on different dependencies that when packaged up in a well written docker image (which not all are) would have obviated. As a developer I see this more with programming languages than other things, and this very thing is what led to language "package management systems" like rbenv, sdkman, asdf, and the like.
• llm_nerd 3y ago
  A better question is why wouldn't I use the docker image? The docker image is an official work output of the project, handles all dependencies without messing up my target machines (I use the pandoc/extra which includes pretty much every ancillary need such as Latex), and is trivial to keep up to date and current holistically. It is by default isolated and controlled to a degree, and allows me to trivially tape together as necessary. The other comment nailed it pretty well, though they hedged it by citing habit (presumably to counter the weird anti-docker trend that has arisen). Dockerizing (or simply containerizing) most vendored products is a choice that is often beneficial, and the marginal overhead is a rounding error.