[infogulch]

> often any slight change causes the entire stack to fall apart

Yes, but this is true generally; it's not specific to containers. Any dev environment naturally tends disorder with unsynchronized versions, implicit dependencies, platform-specific quirks, etc. It takes an effort to keep chaos at bay.

At least with containers you have a chance of fully capturing the complete list of dev dependencies & installed software. I'm interested in how CodeSpaces/Coder.com solves these issues.

[Ao7bei3s]

Counter-argument(?): I've seen a product where production ran in Docker, but development was a mix of Mac, Windows and every popular Linux distribution, on laptops, on-prem servers and in the cloud, as per each devs preference. Components could be run separately. The product could run anywhere.

Then standardization crept into development. Two years later, it was essentially impossible to run it outside Docker built by Bamboo, deployed by Jenkins in on-prem OpenStack, components were tightly coupled (database wasn't configurable anymore, filesystem had to look a certain way, etc.), and it required very specific library versions, which largely haven't been updated ever again, and cannot be updated easily anymore by now. No individual team had an overview of everything inside the container anymore (we ended up with 3 Redis, 1 Mongo and 1 Postgres in that container. The project to split it apart again was cancelled after a while). Production and development were the same container images, but in completely different environments.

If you want code paths to work, you need to exercise them regularly through tests. Likewise, if you want a flexible codebase, you need to use that flexibility constantly. Control what goes into production, but be flexible during development.

[boudin]

The same mistake can be done outside of containers though. Any software needs to be maintained and its dependancies kept up to date. Containers might give the feeling that it's not a necessity anymore as it allows to spin up an environment in one command, but in the end those dependencies are still there.

My experience is the opposite. I once had started a job with totally outdated software that couldn't be run anywhere else than the old server it was currently running and had never been touched since 2008. We were able in the end to bring everything back up to date and create containers that are: - easy to update - allow devs to work on their favourite os (windows, linux or macos) - does not require someone help devs to fix their dev environment regularly

[mailslot]

So much this.

[dahfizz]

Sure, keeping a stack clean is always difficult. But I think OPs point was that programming in a container encourages a more fragile setup.

On a native setup, you get a feel for the fact that X config file might be in different places, or that Y lib is more robust and more widely available than lib Z. You end up with a more robust application because you have been "testing" it on a wide range of systems from day one.

[rumanator]

> But I think OPs point was that programming in a container encourages a more fragile setup.

I don't see how that point can be argued at all, particularly if the project is expected to be deployed with Docker.

[dahfizz]

I just argued that point.

When developing inside docker, you are fooled into thinking that various things about your environment are constants. When it comes time to update your base image, all these constants change, and your application breaks.

[rumanator]

> When developing inside docker, you are fooled into thinking that various things about your environment are constants.

No, you really aren't. You're just using a self-contained environment. That's it. If somehow you fool yourself into assuming your ad-hoc changes you made to your dev environment will be present in your prod environment although you did zero to ensure they exist then the problem lies with you and your broken deployment process, not the tools you chose to adopt.

A bad workman blames his tools. Always.

[jfim]

Is that a problem in practice though?

Updating libraries or the base image that one's code depends on always has the risk of breaking from API changes or regressions, and in a container, at least it's easy to reproduce the issue.

[nemetroid]

> Yes, but this is true generally; it's not specific to containers.

Always using containers make it harder for you to tell when you're making your setup brittle. If your environment always is exactly the same, how will you notice when you introduce dependencies on particular quirks with that environment? If your developers use different operating systems, different compilers, etc., you have a better shot at noticing undesirable coupling between the system and its environment.

[OJFord]

But why do you care? This seems true bit backwards to me. Using a container with the same image as everyone else lets you all use the same environment, while each using whatever environment you want.

If you run on Linux right now but think you might one day switch to running natively on Windows server... Ok sure, but who's in that position?

[wahern]

The most obvious and critical reason is because of security. You don't want your app to be stuck on Ubuntu 12.04 forever, but that's exactly what can happen. If you're not incrementally updating and fixing your stuff, you end up facing 5+ years of accumulated problems, at which point many people will take door #2: keep using the broken environment until somebody forces you not to; or door #3: start from scratch.

The upgrade treadmill is exactly that, a treadmill--it's exercise. The alternative to not exercising is poor health and an early death.

[bluntfang]

but then theres the guy who only eats bacon, smokes 2 packs a day, never exercises, and lives to see 105.

[mailslot]

Opposite side of this. Back in the day there was this company called Silicon Graphics (SGI). They had this API called GL, it’s what you know as OpenGL.

Software was written for their workstations that ran their UNIX OS IRIX. This is where Maya and many other awesome programs were built. Maya now runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, etc.

Cross platform code is fantastic.

[OJFord]

Is anybody writing user programs that might otherwise be cross-platform and shipping them as an image with a docker dependency?

[nemetroid]

Yes, our main application is mostly used as a cloud service deployed in Kubernetes, but also has deployments running natively on Windows.

[majormajor]

You're arguing "containers give you a chance of keeping everything pristine" but the claim was "you end up with a more robust system if you don't thing 'everything should be pristine' should be a precondition."

I'm not sure I agree with the original poster though. I both dislike doing dev inside a container and dislike complicated manual dev environment setups. Containers for deps like dbs are more reasonable. This is faster perf-wise, more friendly for fancy tooling/debuggers and such, and it introduces just enough heterogeneity that you may catch weird quirks that could bite you on update in the future.

But you should be able to spin up/down new deploys easily, without having to do manual provisioning and such, which means the env on your servers should be container-like, even if it's not directly a container. Pristine and freshly-initialized. And then if you regularly upgrade the dependency versions, from linux version to third part lib versions to runtime versions, then you will still avoid the brittleness.