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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.

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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...

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

What do you mean by "truly static"?

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

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

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