Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Vagrant Feature Preview: Docker-Based Development Environments

vagrantup.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 60 posts

Re: Vagrant Feature Preview: Docker-Based Development Environments

#41

Post by jsmeaton »

Can someone explain to me - are containers based on a base OS, or are they capable of running on any OS? I see the 'run anywhere' taglines and it just doesn't make sense to me.

I imagine that docker containers have to be provisioned in some way, and if you're provisioning with `apt-get` then it's not going to work when deploying to a redhat OS.

Essentially, I understand Docker containers to be lightweight virtual machines rather than applications that can be deployed to anything running the docker service. Am I on the right track?

Re: Vagrant Feature Preview: Docker-Based Development Environments

#42

Post by _zen »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #38
_zen wrote: post #13

I have wanted this since Docker was announced last year. In my eyes the biggest gain of Docker for development over VMs is boot time. Now I can turn all my Vagrant VBoxes to Docker containers, and work much faster. Thanks to all the maintainers for the hard work.

vagrant-lxc provides the fast boot times of Docker too, and it's been working well for most of the last year. It's too bad you didn't know about that!

I did know about and tried vagrant-lxc, and even the per 3rd party vagrant-docker implementations. None of them worked well or provided the right amount of ease of use and features that Vagrant and Docker provided.

Re: Vagrant Feature Preview: Docker-Based Development Environments

#43

Post by leccine »

jsmeaton wrote: post #41

Can someone explain to me - are containers based on a base OS, or are they capable of running on any OS? I see the 'run anywhere' taglines and it just doesn't make sense to me. I imagine that docker containers have to be provisioned in some way, and if you're provisioning with `apt-get` then it's not going to work when deploying to a redhat OS. Essentially, I understand Docker containers to be lightweight virtual mac…

It is not a virtual machine, it is just a separated process space that looks like a VM though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LXC

Re: Vagrant Feature Preview: Docker-Based Development Environments

#44

Post by dogestudios »

mattjaynes wrote: post #33

This is a really great step forward - thanks Mitchell! I've recently spent a couple of weeks doing a deep dive into Docker, so I'll share some insights from what I've learned. First, it's important to understand that Docker is an advanced optimization. Yes, it's extremely cool, but it is not a replacement for learning basic systems first. That might change someday, but currently, in order to use Docker in a productio…

> If you truly want to bypass learning the basics, then use Heroku or another similar service that handles much of that for you. Docker is not the answer.

IMO Docker is a no-ops thing in the same way Heroku is. Not because Docker is especially good at taking care of all this but because Heroku isn't especially good either. Some things are taken care of by Heroku for free that aren't taken care of by Docker and vice versa. One example is that when you set up a Heroku app the number of logs it keeps is very short. This could be a disaster. At least when Docker is set up it keeps a reasonable number of logs (with most that are on GitHub). The developer may not know how to get them but can learn it on the fly.

The other no-ops solutions often suck in some ways because to the difference between the needs of the companies that sell them and the developer. So even though Docker might have some problems I'm not convinced that a naive Docker setup is worse than a naive PaaS setup.

Either way the developer who doesn't get the basics right (not your exhaustive list) is likely to be embarrassed at some point.

Re: Vagrant Feature Preview: Docker-Based Development Environments

#45

Post by archivator »

mattjaynes wrote: post #33

This is a really great step forward - thanks Mitchell! I've recently spent a couple of weeks doing a deep dive into Docker, so I'll share some insights from what I've learned. First, it's important to understand that Docker is an advanced optimization. Yes, it's extremely cool, but it is not a replacement for learning basic systems first. That might change someday, but currently, in order to use Docker in a productio…

As someone just now learning how docker works, I absolutely agree.

Personally, I think there are some new-ish interesting immutability ideas that can be explored with regards to static files. It's not clear to me whether static assets (or even static sites) belong inside the container. I would be really interested in experienced folks' opinions on the immutability of the image. Where do you draw the line on what goes inside it and what's mounted in?

Re: Vagrant Feature Preview: Docker-Based Development Environments

#47

Post by ecnahc515 »

jsmeaton wrote: post #41

Can someone explain to me - are containers based on a base OS, or are they capable of running on any OS? I see the 'run anywhere' taglines and it just doesn't make sense to me. I imagine that docker containers have to be provisioned in some way, and if you're provisioning with `apt-get` then it's not going to work when deploying to a redhat OS. Essentially, I understand Docker containers to be lightweight virtual mac…

Containers, not VMs.

Containers contain processes, and Docker base images allow you to use yum/dpkg/apt in various containers, it doesn't matter what host OS you use, as long as you run a supported Linux Kernel.

Re: Vagrant Feature Preview: Docker-Based Development Environments

#48

Post by teamonkey »

lilsunnybee wrote: post #20

Is anyone else really offended by the name of their product? I mean why didn't they name it Gypsy or Hindu, maybe Eskimo or Shemale? So many groups out there just waiting to be further denigrated, trivialized and then commoditised. Fuck these guys.

Are you referring to vagrants or dockers?

Re: Vagrant Feature Preview: Docker-Based Development Environments

#49

Post by robszumski »

jsmeaton wrote: post #41

Can someone explain to me - are containers based on a base OS, or are they capable of running on any OS? I see the 'run anywhere' taglines and it just doesn't make sense to me. I imagine that docker containers have to be provisioned in some way, and if you're provisioning with `apt-get` then it's not going to work when deploying to a redhat OS. Essentially, I understand Docker containers to be lightweight virtual mac…

As long as the userland is supported by your kernel, you can run it within a container on that host. You build your custom containers off of a base container that has the initial userland in it already. This is normally the first line in a Dockerfile:

`FROM busybox` or `FROM ubuntu:latest`

Re: Vagrant Feature Preview: Docker-Based Development Environments

#50

Post by shykes »

archivator wrote: post #45
mattjaynes wrote: post #33

This is a really great step forward - thanks Mitchell! I've recently spent a couple of weeks doing a deep dive into Docker, so I'll share some insights from what I've learned. First, it's important to understand that Docker is an advanced optimization. Yes, it's extremely cool, but it is not a replacement for learning basic systems first. That might change someday, but currently, in order to use Docker in a productio…

As someone just now learning how docker works, I absolutely agree. Personally, I think there are some new-ish interesting immutability ideas that can be explored with regards to static files. It's not clear to me whether static assets (or even static sites) belong inside the container. I would be really interested in experienced folks' opinions on the immutability of the image. Where do you draw the line on what goes…

You don't have to choose between what's inside and what's mounted in. You can mark persistent directories (directories that should live longer than any given instance) as volumes with "dockercrun -v". Docker will arrange for them to live separately from the rest of the container filesystem. Then you can share volumes between containers with "docker run --volumes-from"
Post reply on HN