[m463]

I'm a novice docker user, but I found Dockerfiles to be probably the most direct, graspable, important part of docker.

It's one readable text file used to recreate an entire environment. It's sort of a picture worth a thousand command lines.

That said, I wish there was a way to get rid of all the && stuff, which is used to avoild writing a layer of the filesytem.

Why not have something like:

    RUN foo
    RUN bar
    RUN bletch
    LAYER

[nhumrich]

The && is just layer squashing and not really needed. You can just use run on every line. Docker even supports squashing images now, so the && doesn't matter if you squash.

[jacques_chester]

&& doesn't layer squash, it's a trick to avoid the layer commit that RUN implies.

And squashing comes with a major drawback: you lose layer caching and any hope of a vaguely-efficient rebuilding process.

[jacques_chester]

When I first encountered Cloud Foundry, here's the arduous journey I had to first undertake to learn how to use buildpacks:

    cf push

Whereas with Dockerfiles I had to learn several commands and a lot of exciting gotchas.

[m463]

I just like the philosophy of docker, although I am recognizing here the implementation has some warts.

also, if you're just a user of docker you might not care about dockerfiles. (like most people building software don't care about the Makefiles and prefer not to look at them)

[jacques_chester]

I like some of the philosophy of docker. But there are improvements left on the table around build and shipment efficiency. Plus it introduces real problems at scale, mostly around the sanity and safety of the overall cluster.