[dboreham]

For me it's about the ROAC property (Runs On Any Computer). I prefer working with stuff that I can run. Running software is live software, working software, loved software. Software that only works in weird places is bad, at least for me. Docker is pretty crappy in most respects, but it has the ROAC going for it.

I would love to have a "docker-like thing" (with ROAC) that used VMs not containers (or some other isolation tech that works). But afaik that thing does not yet exist. Yes there are several "container-tool, but we made it use VMs" (firecracker and downline), but they all need weirdo special setup, won't run on my laptop, or a generic Digitalocean VM.

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

Yeah that's kind of a crummy tradeoff.

Docker is "Runs on any Linux, mostly, if you have a new enough kernel" meaning it packages a big VM anyway for Windows and macOS

VMs are "Runs on anything! ... Sorta, mostly, if you have VM acceleration" meaning you have to pick a VM software and hope the VM doesn't crash for no reason. (I have real bad luck with UTM and VirtualBox on my Macbook host for some reason.)

All I want is everything - An APE-like program that runs on any OS, maybe has shims for slightly-old kernels, doesn't need a big installation step, and runs any useful guest OS. (i.e. Linux)

[compsciphd]

docker is your userspace program carries all its user space dependencies with it and doesn't depend on the userspace configuration of the underlying system.

What I argued in my paper is that systems like docker (i.e. what I created before it), improve over VMs and (even Zones/ZFS) in their ability to really run ephemeral computation. i.e. if it takes microseconds to setup the container file system, you can run a boatload of heterogeneous containers even if they only needed to run for very shot periods of time). Solaris Zones/ZFS didn't lend itself to heterogeneous environments, but simply cloning as single homogeneous environment, while VMs suffered from that problem, they also (at least at the time, much improved as of late) required a reasonably long bootup time.

[neaanopri]

The modern developer yearns for Java

[smallmancontrov]

I had to use eclipse the other day. How the hell is it just as slow and clunky as I remember from 20 years ago? Does it exist in a pocket dimension where Moore's Law doesn't apply?

[marcosdumay]

It's not as slow as it was 20 years ago.

It's only as slow as you remember because the actual performance was so bad that you can't physiologically remember it.

[TurningCanadian]

That's not Java's fault though. IntelliJ IDEA is also built on Java and runs just fine.

[qwery]

I think it's pretty remarkable to see any application in continuous use for so long, especially with so few changes[0] -- Eclipse must be doing something right!

Maintaining (if not actively improving/developing) a piece of useful software without performance degradation -- that's a win.

Keeping that up for decades? That's exceptional.

[0] "so few changes": I'm not commenting on the amount of work done on the project or claiming that there is no useful/visible features added or upgrades, but referring to Eclipse of today feeling like the same application as it always did, and that Eclipse hasn't had multiple alarmingly frequent "reboots", "overhauls", etc.

[?] keeping performance constant over the last decade or two is a win, relatively speaking, anyway

[dijit]

I agree, that you've pointed it out to me makes it obvious that this is not the norm, and we should celebrate this.

I'm reminded of Casey Muratori's rant on Visual Studio; a program that largely feels like it hasn't changed much but clearly has regressed in performance massively; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-0tCy4P1U

[password4321]

> without performance degradation

Not accounting for Moore's Law, yikes. Need a comparison adjusted for "today's dollars".

[mschuster91]

Java's ecosystem is just as bad. Gradle is insanely flexible but people create abominations out of it, Maven is extremely rigid so people resort to even worse abominations to get basic shit done.

[gryfft]

Maybe just the JVM.

[klooney]

> Runs on any Linux, mostly, if you have a new enough kernel"

New enough kernel means CentOS 5 is right out. But it's been a decade, it'll run on anything vaguely sensible to be running today

[01HNNWZ0MV43FF]

Maybe I'm just grumpy that once you line up the support windows, it's impossible to get new software on old hardware, even though the "oomph" is there

Maybe my next big hobby project should be emulating bleeding-edge Linux on some old 686 hardware. Like that guy who booted Ubuntu on an 8-bit AVR in a matter of mere days

[ThreatSystems]

Vagrant / Packer?

[stackskipton]

Wouldn't work here, they have software on each VM that cannot be reimaged. To use Packer properly, you should treat like you do stateless pod, just start a new one and take down the old one.

[ThreatSystems]

Sure then throw Ansible over the top for configuration/change management. Packer gives you a solid base for repeatable deployments. Their model was to ensure that data stays within the VM which a deployed AMI made from Packer would suit the bill quite nicely. If they need to do per client configuration then ansible or even AWS SSM could fit the bill there once EC2 instance is deployed.

For data sustainment if they need to upgrade / replace VMs, have a secondary EBS (volume) mounted which solely stores persistent data for the account.

[stackskipton]

That might work as well. I've found Packer + Ansible to be juice not really worth the squeeze vs base Ubuntu/Debian/Rocky + bigger Ansible playbook.

[gavindean90]

With all the mind share that terraform gets you would thing vagrant would at least be known but alas

[tptacek]

Somebody educate me about the problem Packer would solve for you in 2024?

[sgarland]

Making machine images. AWS calls them AMIs. Whatever your platform, that's what it's there for. It's often combined with Ansible, and basically runs like this:

1. Start a base image of Debian / Ubuntu / whatever – this is often done with Terraform.

2. Packer types a boot command after power-on to configure whatever you'd like

3. Packer manages the installation; with Debian and its derivatives, this is done mostly through the arcane language of preseed [0]

4. As a last step, a pre-configured SSH password is set, then the new base VM reboots

5. Ansible detects SSH becoming available, and takes over to do whatever you'd like.

6. Shut down the VM, and create clones as desired. Manage ongoing config in a variety of ways – rolling out a new VM for any change, continuing with Ansible, shifting to Puppet, etc.

[0]: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Preseed

[pxc]

This is nice in its uniformity (same tool works for any distro that has an existing AMI to work with), but it's insanely slow compared to just putting a rootfs together and uploading it as an image.

I think I'd usually rather just use whatever distro-specific tools for putting together a li'l chroot (e.g., debootstrap, pacstrap, whatever) and building a suitable rootfs in there, then finish it up with amazon-ec2-ami-tools or euca2ools or whatever and upload directly. The pace of iteration with Packer is just really painful for me.

[sgarland]

I haven’t played with chroot since Gentoo (which for me, was quite a while ago), so I may be incorrect, but isn’t that approach more limited in its customization? As in, you can install some packages, but if you wanted to add other repos, configure 3rd party software, etc. you’re out of luck.

[stargrazer]

I miss saltstack. I did that whole litany of steps with one tool plus preseed.

[elevation]

Saltstack is still around!

[kasey_junk]

I think the thread is more about how docker was a reaction to the vagrant/packer ecosystem that was deemed overweight but was in many ways was a “docker like thing” but VMs.

[tptacek]

Oh, yeah, I'm not trying to prosecute, I've just always been Packer-curious.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

What's a better way to make VM images?

[DaanDeMeyer]

There's lots of tools in this space. I work on https://github.com/systemd/mkosi for example.