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Docker for nodejs

Rubin on September 16, 2019

Docker is a great conterization platform with tons of out of the features out of the box. So, in this post we are going to skip the traditional hos...
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Yanik Peiffer

Usually I use the alpine version of the Node image. It still includes the basic components that are required for most projects. It saves you a lot of space and your image is smaller.

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Zafri Zulkipli • Edited

Does smaller image means faster resource handling in this case? I had a problem using alpine before (can't exactly remember what it is, sorry) and had to switch to ubuntu based image. It can handle resource as fast as alpine except that the image size is larger, compatibility wise ubuntu based image is much better. So to me, I prefer higher compatibility over image size.

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Milebroke

The cleanest approach would be a docker multi stage build. You can take whatever image you need for the build, then build the application in it. Afterwards you create your running image with an alpine version and take the deployment artifact (hopefully a single js file) from the building container and just run it.

"I prefer higher compatibility over image size."
-> higher compatibility would mean a bigger security attack surface. With multi stage you can have the best out of both worlds :)

docs.docker.com/develop/develop-im...

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Rubin • Edited

Yes that is true but some packages like bcrypt which are built by node-gyp from source causes problems in alpine

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Sung M. Kim

Being a docker newbie myself, would it make sense to start off with an alpine version and only use only if there is a problem?

Or should I stick with a full node image initially?

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Yanik Peiffer

I like to keep my images small, because I store them online in my image registry. Whenever a node package doesn’t work and is definitely required I try out another node image. Worst option is the full node image. With this option the size of my docker images can be up to 1gb..

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Sung M. Kim

Been wondering why some of my images are gigantic!... I see that a layer choice makes a huge difference in terms of the result image size.

Thank you, Yanik