paulwratt/docker-alpine-v3.7.0-arm

A minimal Docker image based on v3.7.0 Alpine Linux ARM

docker-alpine

A super small Docker image based on [Alpine Linux][alpine]. The image is only 5 MB and has access to a package repository that is much more complete than other BusyBox based images.

Why?

Docker images today are big. Usually much larger than they need to be. There are a lot of ways to make them smaller, but the Docker populace still jumps to the ubuntu base image for most projects. The size savings over ubuntu and other bases are huge:

REPOSITORY              TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
containerstack/alpine   latest              e6efe7544e54        18 minutes ago      3.97MB
debian                  latest              a25c1eed1c6f        3 days ago          123MB
centos                  latest              3bee3060bfc8        5 days ago          193MB
ubuntu                  latest              7b9b13f7b9c0        8 days ago          118MB
fedora                  latest              15895ef0b3b2        7 weeks ago         231MB

There are images such as progrium/busybox which get us very close to a minimal container and package system. But these particular BusyBox builds piggyback on the OpenWRT package index which is often lacking and not tailored towards generic everyday applications. Alpine Linux has a much more complete and up to date [package index][alpine-packages]:

Usage

Stop doing this:

FROM ubuntu-debootstrap:14.04
RUN apt-get update -q \
  && DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install -qy mysql-client \
  && apt-get clean \
  && rm -rf /var/lib/apt
ENTRYPOINT ["mysql"]

This took 19 seconds to build and yields a 164 MB image. Eww. Start doing this:

FROM containerstack/alpine:3.7.0
RUN apk add --no-cache mysql-client
ENTRYPOINT ["mysql"]

Only 3 seconds to build and results in a 36 MB image! Hooray!

Other helpfull stuf

Links to usefull websites
[Alpine]: http://alpinelinux.org/
[Alpine Packages]: http://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/
[About Alpine]: https://www.alpinelinux.org/about/
[GitHub Issues]: https://github.com/containerstack/docker-alpine/issues
[Docker Hub]: https://hub.docker.com/r/containerstack/alpine-arm/