Docker adds other value to the lifecycle of your deployment. An "optimization" where you're removing value is just a compromise. Otherwise we'd all run our static sites on UEFI.
i've been meaning to ask you this for a decade. whatever happened to when you wrote a blog with insanely irritating serifs that connected certain letters together? what was the rationale behind that? never seen it since
I'm insanely impressed by APE and redbean by the way, blows OP out of the water!
Adding value is a compromise of some increased security risk - and it's our job to mitigate that as much as possible by writing quality software.
You can limit file system access for the server to only a certain folder.
You can similarly limit port access and manage conflicts (e.g. multiple servers can think they are listening on a certain open port but those are mapped to something else on the host).
If you have multiple machines with different operating systems or even architecture you can deploy your server as a container more easily on them without needing to rebuild or test for each one.
You can have the same environment running locally while development or on CI servers without complicated setups.
The system can scale out a lot more easily to hundreds/thousands of machines if you decide to use something like Kubernetes.
The ability to pull the image on to any machine without needing to clone the source files and build it.
Smaller images mean faster pod starts when you auto scale.
What kind of work are you doing that requires really fast auto scaling? Is a few minutes to spin up a new instance really that cumbersome? Can you not signal for it to spin up a new instance a tiny bit earlier than when it's needed when you see traffic increases?
In isolation, yes. But if, for instance, you're already running a container orchestration tool with hundreds of containers, and have CI/CD pipelines already set up to do all of that, it's easier just to tack on another container.
Which seems like sort of an edge case for value adding, and makes me feel like it really doesn't add any value to do this unless you already are doing it for everything, and thus you really wouldn't be throwing out any value by just serving the static site without the docker overhead.
Anything else, though? There’s got to be more to it than that, or it wouldn’t be as popular as it is.
docker has dead whale on the beach vibes. what value does it offer to those of us who have moved on from the mess linux is becoming?
Really, enlighten me
If you can't see a reason why, then you probably don't need to. You probably have different needs than other people.
Many people use Docker not because of what they're doing inside of the container, but because it is convenient for tangential activities. Like lifecycle management, automation, portability, scheduling, etc.
I have several static sites in Docker containers in production. We also have dozens of other microservices in containers. We could do everything the same way, or we can one-off an entirely separate architecture for our static sites. The former makes more sense for us.
But once you start wanting to run a significant number of things, or a significant number of instances of a thing, it becomes more helpful to have a all-purpose tool designed to manage images & run instances of them. Having a common operational pattern for all your systems is a nice, overt, clean, common practice everyone can adapt & gain expertise in. Rather than each project or company defining it's own deployment/operationization/management patterns & implementations.
The cost of containers is also essentially near zero (alas somewhat less true with regards to local FS performance, but basically equal for many volume mounts). They come with great features like snapshots & the ability to make images off images- CoW style capabilities, the ability to mix together different volumes- there's some really great operational tools in containers too.
Some people just don't have real needs. For everyone else...
Hell if you just need to serve static HTTP it even has its own built in webserver now: