[Animats]

Do Docker images really have to contain an entire bloated Linux distro? Even for Xen, which, as a hypervisor, provides fewer services than Docker, it's possible to write applications which run directly under Xen.

[errordeveloper]

They don't have to, one can run static binary without any problems. It's just that most people keep throwing in a whole distro...

[iso8859-1]

You can't make a truly static binary with glibc, so almost no one has a toolchain that is able to do it.

[michaelmior]

What do you mean by "truly static"?

[iso8859-1]

One that doesn't try to load dynamic objects on runtime like glibc does, if you use certain functions.

[zobzu]

im not sure why one wouldnt want a whole distro tho - it makes debugging, testing, etc far easier.