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by shingler 4213 days ago
I'm well-acquainted with Docker's architecture and some of the ways it's used in the field. I wouldn't call it modular. It might be well-factored and even separated into multiple modes and repos, but that's not modularity; that's just good code.

When you ship batteries, people depend on the batteries and that means you can't really swap them when you want to because things stop fitting. It doesn't help that all of this is baked by default into a single monolithically versioned binary with an API whose documentation isn't nearly rigorous or stable enough to promote alternative implementations.

I like Docker or I wouldn't be here commenting, but you know what would make me love Docker? If every piece was pipeable CLI command.

Like...

    docker-listen tcp://,... | docker-run --image-tar=blah --container-tar=blah | docker-monitor --log-file=blah | docker-swarm --orchestrator-socket=orch.sock | docker-link --port=some.other.machine:port
I know this is a crazy rethinking of how Docker's APIs work, but I think that fact perfectly demonstrates my point about how un-modular Docker really is as far as its users are concerned.
3 comments
tlrobinson 4213 days ago
I think a model similar to git's "plumbing and porcelain" [1] could work well.

[1] http://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Plumbing-and-Por...

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nostrademons 4213 days ago
FWIW, as a startup cofounder with a non-technical partner who likes to do design/copyediting tweaks, the ability to do "docker up" and have it bring the whole system up on Linux, Mac, and cloud is a huge sell. I know how pipes work and can memorize a half dozen commands, but my cofounder certainly does not, and any tweaks she can do on her own is work that I don't have to.
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nickstinemates 4213 days ago
I don't think it's crazy. I think it's cool and your points completely valid.

A good question we have to ask is how do we get from where we are, to the desired end state that you describe? There's nothing stopping it from happening, it's a fork away with a good chance of upstream contribution.

Today that's through proposals and discussions in freely available on github, irc, and mailing lists for the docker project and which we call fire hose of information symbolically.

Maybe we're missing an additional avenue for input and creativity. What do you think?

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