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Alpine makes Python Docker builds way too(50×) slower, and images double(2×) larger
Letting to get off the excuse of “It only works on my machine”, the advent of containerization engines bought with it a boom in technology and nearly a de-facto standard for the same is Docker, today. Containerization with docker engines needs me to understand difference in images, containers and further going to K8s bring clusters and management of nodes between them.
But hey, do you know we can write a docker image per-configured with the libraries, settings and other stuff with the help of something called as a Dockerfile.
Lets see, what is a Dockerfile first-off all
A Dockerfile is a text document that contains all the commands a user could call on the command line to assemble an image. Using docker build users can create an automated build that executes several command-line instructions in succession. The docker build command builds an image from a Dockerfile and a context. The build’s context is the set of files at a specified location PATH or URL where the PATH is a directory on your local filesystem.
A typical dockerfile looks somewhat like this….
And commands to run the container made with image are…
Although every command need to be focused solely in itself, but my point of concentration here would remain the base image in such files, which is usually the first line in a Dockerfile starting with command FROM.
A base image or parent image is where your image is based. It’s your starting point. It could be an Ubuntu OS, Redhat, MySQL, Redis, etc. Base images don’t just fall from the sky. They’re created — and you too can create one from scratch. There are also many base images out there that you can use, so you don’t need to create one in most cases.
When you’re choosing a base image for your Docker image, Alpine Linux is often recommended due to the benefits it comes with; Small. Simple. Secure. Alpine Linux is a security-oriented, lightweight Linux distribution based on musl libc and busybox.
