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I think "docker" is an ambiguous term nowadays.

Depending on your point of view, it could denote a container, or source control, or a sort of makefile.

To me it is a reproducible recipe in 43 lines of Dockerfile text.



This thing is basically a bash script that runs the package manager of a distro pointing to the latest package feed; not even a specific stable version or anything like that.

It also depends on host kernel features such as KVM settings and hardware such as CPU (good luck on AMD) much more than whatever is packaged on the container.

This is about as "reproducible" as replaying my .bash_history on a different machine. I would bet that before the end of this year this script no longer works.


> I think "docker" is an ambiguous term nowadays.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Words have meaning. This should go doubly so for engineers. Our language should be as precise as possible when describing systems.


English vocabulary rules - vocabulary is built of axiom schemata - are insanely complex, and still we have to rely heavily on disambiguation by context. It is the nature of NL semantics. I'm not arguing against more precise terms of art, just saying that expanding an insanely huge and complex vocabulary isn't a great way to accomplish that. Establish your context, then use your symbols in that context; thus are all utterances disambiguated.


It is definitely a recipe, but the "reproducible" claim is weak. These 43 lines of Dockerfile text are unlikely to work in a few months (or even weeks).


Okay, I know how docker can mean containers, and I agree that Dockerfiles are quite similar to makefiles, but how does docker relate to source control?


Docker keeps a history of changes to the container with layers, and you might arguably treat it like version control.

maybe "docker history" ~ "git log"?? tags=branches?

Docker isn't one thing, so it's ALL grey. It's not really make. It's not really a vm. It's not really even reproducible.

One thing is for certain - it's hard to describe docker to new folks so they get it. "it's sort of like netflix, for cows, but in space..."


That's the most insane use of Docker I've ever heard of.


I'm not saying people use it for vc, it's how docker works. It optimizes your containers using layers and if you do "FROM ubuntu:18.04" in 3 dockerfiles, you only have one copy of the ubuntu stuff.




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