Clarify node:slim recommendation.

[docker-library]

Clarify node:slim recommendation.

[luebken]

I know this is an old issue. But a small comment why this is closed would be nice.

[tianon]

It was closed because it's lacking a concrete proposal (and the OP was a request for clarification, which was provided) -- the current description for slim variants is generic, and if the node image maintainers want something more specific that should probably come in the form of a PR (adding a node/variant-slim.md file).

If the question is instead whether node:slim is recommended for use or not, I'm afraid https://github.com/nodejs/docker-node or a dedicated support forum, such as the Docker Community Forums, the Docker Community Slack, or Stack Overflow is going to be a better / more appropriate place to have that discussion.

[tianon]

I'm definitely +1 on rewording the slim docs (https://github.com/docker-library/docs/blob/046ddc6f448df2168f6aefda2de9c93662e46e1e/.template-helpers/variant-slim.md) to be more clear.

The intention of the existing docs was to point out that if you're not sure what you're doing, you should use the default tag. If you know what you're doing, the slim tag is definitely the way to go, but there's going to be a lot more manual labor involved with using it, on average.

[luebken]

TIL that the slim description is is generalised and used in different repos like ruby, python, nodejs

Is there a consensus what slim actually means? From what I read slim means:

• smaller than the default
• the way to go if you know what to do. (just because of size? other reasons?)
• might require more manual labor

[yosifkit]

That sounds about right. The simple way to describe slim is to describe that the not-slim version has lots of default libraries (usually FROM buildpack-deps) so that most projects can just run without needing to worry about system packages (ie, npm install X will work 95% of the time). So to save space, slim versions have just enough to run language X. npm/bundle/pip will probably need some apt packages to even install a module, but anything that is part of the core of the language will work (ie, things that would require recompiling the language).

[olof-nord]

Is there any information available as to why this issue was closed?

I came here to find out more about the non-recommendation of -slim as well, this was the first information I found.

[olof-nord]

Many thanks for your answer and for the information provided @tianon!