[TekMol]

Is Docker really a hassle?

In every project directory, I have a "run.sh" script that starts a docker container with the right stack and mounts the project dir into the container.

Been doing this for years now. It feels completely seamless, fast and logical to me. What am I missing?

[IndigoStack]

I'm glad Docker works so well for you as the premise is awesome. You're on a Mac right? It's just that you having a bespoke run.sh, and "mounting directories" makes me think Linux, where yes, Docker would be excellent for development.

However, assuming you are on Mac, I'm curious what kind of development you do? It seems hard these days to avoid stuff like `composer update` or `npm update` or to compile SASS or to bundle JS and as soon as you do any of those things, with Docker you start to get a syncing feeling. Sorry, shouldn't try to be funny this late in the day... :)

Oh also, when I run Docker for Mac I often get random 100% CPU usage for no reason at all, with no containers running, causing all my fans to spin up to full. I also periodically find I've run out of SSD space because docker has used it all up with qcows or something. And anytime I had to make a config change in one of my images I had to jump through flaming hoops to get it to take effect in the container. Not because of Docker per-se but because I wanted to write PHP or Javascript, not learn how to sysadmin Docker.

[TekMol]

I'm using Linux as the host. No problems with Docker being slow. I can't say if there is a difference to running stuff directly on the host. If there is, it must be such a small difference that I can't notice it.

I would have thought Docker runs nice on all the big OSes, Linux, Mac and Windows. Isn't everyone doing everything in Docker these days? I would have thought there is an uproar if it is wonky on some platform.

When I do a config change in a Docker image, I just execute "docker build" and thats it. I have never experienced it not "taking effect in the container". Maybe because I don't keep containers around? The run.sh does "docker run --rm -it" so the container is gone when I stop the application.

[rtpg]

Mac Docker brings its own set of issues. For me it's been a constant battle to deal with Mac For Docker for filesystem performance. Especially everything in JSLand. Loads of file checking, Docker's out of the box file system stuff for Mac has been very rough despite two attempts at resolving it, and just generally awful performance issues.

In theory stuff that is solvable, but it's not like on Linux (which is, after all, just the cgroups + chroot dance). The Mac stuff is painful and slow. And the ways to make some of it fast involve really bad tradeoffs at the other end.

I'm convinced that Docker setups on Mac have cut down on dev hours world wide by at least 10% from this kind of stuff, even with all the wins you get (at least in theory). It's still a bit shocking to me that we haven't figured out a better way to deal with this problem for web development given so many people are on Macs

[vegai_]

Yeah, it's pretty amazing how mediocre Docker (and many other container implementations) can be outside of Linux after one is used to how good it is on Linux. Even though virtualization has improved greatly, it still has a significant overhead.

[TekMol]

Man, that makes me happy I have chosen Linux as my OS and stayed with it.

I couldn't live without Docker anymore. It is just so convenient and logical.

Juggling a mix of environments on my host seems insane to me.

And without Docker, how do you deal with security? How do you work on a project without isolation? Do you trust every project and every piece of code so much that you let it run on your host?