Thoughts on a Container Native Package System

Re:Thoughts on a Container Native Package System by jbeda on Wednesday July 01, 2015 @05:43PM (#9815405)

I agree that they are orthogonal but I'm not convinced that they are the right tool for the job. They can do all sorts of things above and beyond what is needed. Those capabilities come at a cost. For instance, they also manage things like ensuring that servers are running and other transient state.

In addition -- I'd consider the "rerun the config tool on a pre-existing container" to be an anti-pattern. This creates more and more layers to the Docker file that have to be downloaded every time that container is run. I'd much rather build each container from a bedrock up with well versioned dependencies (not as easy as it should be with many package managers).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Thoughts on a Container Native Package System by redsymbol on Wednesday July 01, 2015 @06:19PM (#9815642)

Ah. It clicks for me now. You're proposing a package management system that operates on the image level. Somehow I didn't fully understand that before.

I fully agree that "rerun the config tool on a pre-existing container" is an anti-pattern, and it's best to avoid it if at all possible. I can see how what you are proposing would be a great step in a positive direction.

I'm not convinced CM systems don't have a role, still. They are very flexible and powerful at accommodating many specialized system setup scenarios. But I think that's independent of what you're really focused on here.

Anyway, excellent and well-written article!

[ Parent | on HN ]