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Discussion on: Why Go for Node.js Developers

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philmod profile image
Philippe Modard

You should use an alpine version of the node docker base image, it will be way lighter. Maybe github.com/mhart/alpine-node

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jorin

Yes, I mentioned that above already. You only need to be aware of all the gotcha that come with not using a full blown distro like Debian or Ubuntu.

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Philippe Modard

What are these gotchas?

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jorin

I do like alpine and recommend everyone giving it a try, but if people already have a complicated setup running on another system, it will be a lot of work to port it. You need to find out how to install all the dependencies you are using, deal with differing versions and varying configuration files. And there will be hard to figure out little differences when you - for example - need to compile some C dependency and can't figure out why it's not working with the C toolchain on that system.
Still, give it a try, maybe you don't have any problems with your setup. Docker image size is also not such a big problem if you use a lot of the same images and they can be reused.

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jorin

More interesting thoughts on which images you want to choose: derickbailey.com/2017/05/31/how-a-...