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Talking about Docker as we are Does any one agree it's still too hard for dumb dumb developers like me? I'm on windows (boo hiss) so in the past I've tried to

by slifin 12y ago

Talking about Docker as we are Does any one agree it's still too hard for dumb dumb developers like me? I'm on windows (boo hiss) so in the past I've tried to use boot2docker, but you can't just point your webserver container at a place on your local file system and say serve that please You have to bring in some crazy storage file container which will serve it all via samba or something and then you need to figure out linking those containers together and then how the hell do you tell a web server "hey you, document root is over here on another container" At this point I'm usually like fuck it we'll use some bad idea .exe web stack and develop as normal I like the idea of containers, quicker smaller than vms, nice file system history going on but in practice it isn't easy enough in my opinion

cdoxsey 12y ago
Completely agree. You can do something like this: 1. Statically compile your application so that it can run standalone. For ruby, python or java that means including the interpreter and any dynamic libraries. Hard at first, but once you have a build setup it's pretty straightforward 2. Bundle your application with its assets in a zip file or tarball 3. Make it so that your application has a well defined set of resources it uses that are isolated from other applications. For example with a database you might have a `your-app\data` folder where it stores the actual database. Also make sure you are careful with ports 4. Pass around configuration via environment variables that you hand to your application (ie: DATABASE_HOST=127.0.0.1) With a setup like that you can build a sensible stack that runs anywhere. You don't need containers: 1. You don't need the protection: just don't write processes which clobber other processes. It's not that hard. 2. The reuse mechanism seems cool, but it comes with baggage. Which version of ubuntu are you starting with? Does it include the latest updates to shared libraries? If it does how do you know that your application will still run down the road? And if it doesn't, how are you keeping on top of security updates? 3. Containers, as envisioned by docker, are way overkill. Why do you need an entire ubuntu to run a simple web app?
- Gigablah 12y ago
  In regards to (3), you don't... people have made functional containers with the scratch or busybox images that are less than 10mb in size.
wmf 12y ago
You're not dumb, the problem is that Docker is (currently) a Unix technology and trying to have one foot in Unix and one foot in Windows is always awkward. Maybe wait for the native Windows version of Docker.

by slifin 12y ago

cdoxsey 12y ago

Completely agree. You can do something like this: 1. Statically compile your application so that it can run standalone. For ruby, python or java that means including the interpreter and any dynamic libraries. Hard at first, but once you have a build setup it's pretty straightforward 2. Bundle your application with its assets in a zip file or tarball 3. Make it so that your application has a well defined set of resources it uses that are isolated from other applications. For example with a database you might have a `your-app\data` folder where it stores the actual database. Also make sure you are careful with ports 4. Pass around configuration via environment variables that you hand to your application (ie: DATABASE_HOST=127.0.0.1) With a setup like that you can build a sensible stack that runs anywhere. You don't need containers: 1. You don't need the protection: just don't write processes which clobber other processes. It's not that hard. 2. The reuse mechanism seems cool, but it comes with baggage. Which version of ubuntu are you starting with? Does it include the latest updates to shared libraries? If it does how do you know that your application will still run down the road? And if it doesn't, how are you keeping on top of security updates? 3. Containers, as envisioned by docker, are way overkill. Why do you need an entire ubuntu to run a simple web app?

Gigablah 12y ago
In regards to (3), you don't... people have made functional containers with the scratch or busybox images that are less than 10mb in size.

wmf 12y ago

You're not dumb, the problem is that Docker is (currently) a Unix technology and trying to have one foot in Unix and one foot in Windows is always awkward. Maybe wait for the native Windows version of Docker.