[Archelaos]

My most important advice: Put a README.txt document into the top project folder containing setup information consisely in one place. If necessary, include code snippets and biolerplate command examples to copy&past from.

If the project is larger, you may also include MANUAL.txt, SETUP.txt (for detailled setup infos), TIPS.txt, TODO.txt, HISTORY.txt files or similar to keep the README.txt small.

[PaulHoule]

I think much of the value of "dockerization" is that it forces you to write a script, specifically a dockerfile, to build your system.

Most systems a few things that need to be customized to create an instance: database connections, filesystem paths and API keys.

The other day we (HN) heard from somebody in Germany who was running out of capacity in Azure and wondering what to do, if he'd had a script to build a copy of his system he wouldn't have been stressing it so much. It's good to document and standardize your install process early in development as if you do it when you're not under stress you won't stress it when you are.