Dive: A tool for exploring a Docker image, layer contents and more

I found dive super useful for understanding how docker images work, and how to write efficient dockerfiles. Reading the docs is one thing, but making a change to the dockerfile and then seeing how it has affected the resulting layer structure is what really made me get it.

I used dive when I was trying to cut down on the size of the image. Diffing and seeing what files/directories go into each layer was very useful.

I love dive and its something that I use in my tool kit multiple times a month.

I am curious if anyone knows how to get the contents of the file you have highlighted, a lot of the times I use dive to validate that a file exists in a layer and then I want to peak at it. Currently I normally revert to running the container and using cat or extracting the contents and then wandering into the folders.

There’s other great TUI terminal tools like dive here [0], lazydocker and dry come to mind.

And some in the docker category as well:

[0] https://terminaltrove.com/

What exactly is meant by a layer?