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Defence Against the Docker Arts

blog.heroku.com

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Re: Defence Against the Docker Arts

#11

Post by yebyen »

benbristow wrote: post #8

I love the fact Heroku have open-sourced their buildpacks. Dokku takes great use of these and provides a very similar platform to themselves that you can host yourself (DigitalOcean even provide a base-image that will pre-configure Dokku for you). Great for personal websites and the like. If you want to scale in a pinch then it's a case of making some tiny tweaks and pushing to Heroku instead.

Deis Workflow (now Hephy) used them too! We still use them, and it's a great resource for projects in the same vein.

Although there are some issues with buildpacks in production, they are a great set of training wheels. I'm excited about what's happening with the next generation of buildpacks, CNB is a standard with the support of more than just Heroku – Pivotal is "the other buildpacks company," also involved, and I'm not sure how many other companies!

It's clear sometimes that when you work with containers at scale, that what you're building a lot of layer cakes, and you need to treat the layers separately to remain effective at scale. Some of the ideas like swapping layers out are pretty far out and cool.

Re: Defence Against the Docker Arts

#13

Post by markbnj »

It's nice that they've built a tool that understands specific application contexts and can do the right things to build an efficient image. But imo that does not make the dockerfile a leaky abstraction.

Re: Defence Against the Docker Arts

#15

Post by maimeowmeow »

haditab wrote: post #6
pugworthy wrote: post #5

Vote me down, but oh god that title...

I really wanted to hate the article because of the title, but it actually taught me some neat tricks...

They gave one docker tradeoff/alternative. Didnt come to the article to learn about heroku, came for docker tips, and tricks.

Assuming most people arnt going to change thier whole platform because they didnt bother rtfm, or googling.

Yes docker doesnt handle this well, but there is a lot more nuance to that example.

Re: Defence Against the Docker Arts

#16

Post by krainboltgreene »

chusk3 wrote: post #7
jrockway wrote: post #3

I've been very close to creating something like this internally. It is easy to write a Dockerfile that produces a compact and optimal container. But it's the same lines of code over and over again. Anything we have that's a static site looks like: FROM node:10 AS build WORKDIR /foo COPY . . RUN npm i RUN npx webpack FROM nginx:whatever COPY nginx.conf /etc/nginx/config.d/ COPY --from=build /foo/dist /srv ... It's fin…

You don't have to have separate dockerfiles. If you use multistage builds, you can name the specific terminal stages and then invoke them with 'docker build -t stagename', which will reuse the build cache as you'd expect. I've done this to export multiple app containers from a monorepo.

Yo, their example has multiple stages.

Re: Defence Against the Docker Arts

#17

Post by hateful »

maimeowmeow wrote: post #15
haditab wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wanted to hate the article because of the title, but it actually taught me some neat tricks...

They gave one docker tradeoff/alternative. Didnt come to the article to learn about heroku, came for docker tips, and tricks. Assuming most people arnt going to change thier whole platform because they didnt bother rtfm, or googling. Yes docker doesnt handle this well, but there is a lot more nuance to that example.

I liked the title, and even though I don't do Ruby, I saved it because of the tips and tricks.

Flick and swoosh.

Re: Defence Against the Docker Arts

#18

Post by Spartan-S63 »

jtwaleson wrote: post #4

I've always felt that buildpacks in Heroku / Cloud Foundry are the way to go as they offer a higher level of abstraction than Docker files. The resulting containers are often production ready with good default settings. In docker you are re-inventing the wheel more often than not.

My only criticism with Cloud Foundry/Heroku is that the buildpacks and app staging process are often bloated because they have to be all things to everyone for the common case. There are a decent set of cases where doing custom Docker builds is more advantageous than using buildpacks, however, with the Buildpacks (https://buildpacks.io) project, this may change.

Re: Defence Against the Docker Arts

#20

Post by doneWithDocker »

pugworthy wrote: post #5

Vote me down, but oh god that title...

I mean, I'm pretty much through with talking to people about docker.

There are so many morons out there trumpeting the buzzword, and they are just total imbeciles. My last pointy-haired boss thought he could manipulate the conversation to discover what I know about containerizing EC2 instances, by guiding the conversation with leading questions that'd get me to spill my guts with nerd signaling and posturing, so that he could rip off whatever we discussed and create competition among all his direct reports.

He did this with everyone that worked for him. He'd get us alone in a one-on-one, frame the conversation as a casual discussion where we pick each others brains and sketch out flow charts and relational UML diagrams on a whiteboard, but sprinkled on top, he'd throw a peer under the bus, sell them out, and ask how I might do it better.

On some level, some of my peers really were rotten bastards; complete shit heels; lazy, arrogant pogues. But if pointy-haired boss is doing it to them, he's doing it to me too. I'm just a rube off the street, an ass in a chair at 9 AM on the dot, a warm body with a pulse after all. Replacable and modular as a docker container, yes, yes?

So docker as a buzzword gave this boss a boner. A disgusting, throbbing, pulsating, glistening, dog-dick-red, boss boner. He wanted it sucked, and the way to suck it was to containerize bullshit with docker. So I started telling him the lowest effort shit, and planned my escape, because the guy was toxic waste, and I didn't feel like being a toadie.

It's like jesus, anyone who knows what docker is, knows it to be little more than a glorification of shell scripts and tar files. It doesn't do anything revolutionary. It's a plastic milk crate instead of a cardboard box. If you need to pack your widget with styrofoam peanuts, well, that's your problem.

Pointy-haired boss thought that docker was an art form, like package design is to product unboxing vlogs. He wanted to relish and savor the moment of unboxing the most expensive Apple product ever unboxed before the eyes of youtube.

Sorry boss man, spend the rest of your life with the lifers you can't fire. I'm done with your deceptive, hype gobbling office persona.

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