Over the past year or so I’ve been focusing a good amount on trying to help clients move toward a Continuous Delivery/Continuous Deployment mindset. To that end, I’ve spent a lot of time building pipelines in various CI tools. Something that’s become a common tool in my kit is using Docker containers to build the various projects in our pipelines. This has a lot of very interesting benefits, but also comes with a few challenges. In my talk I’ll tell you why you should care about building your software with Docker. I will also outline the plusses and minuses of this approach, and relay as many of the various tips and tricks I’ve found in my use of it over the past year or so. After my talk is over you should have a clear understanding of this approach, and whether or not you should trial it.

1. Using Docker to
Build Software
James Thomas

2. DISCLAIMER:
THIS ISN’T ABOUT
DOCKERIZING YOUR
APPLICATION
2

3. DISCLAIMER:
HAVE STRONG
INFRASTRUCTURE
AS CODE PRACTICES?
YOU MAY BE GOOD
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4. “SO, WHAT IS THIS?”
AND
“WHY DO THIS?
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5. BUILD AGENTS
OFTEN MANAGED
BY A SEPARATE
TEAMS
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6. SHARED AGENT
POOL
=
COLLECTION OF
SNOWFLAKES
6

7. CAN REPRODUCE
BUILD
ENVIRONMENT
LOCALLY*
7

8. “WHAT’S THE
CATCH?”
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9. DIFFERENCES
BETWEEN HOST
OSES SOMETIMES
MATTER
9

10. DIFFERENCES
BETWEEN HOST
OSES SOMETIMES
MATTER
10

11. PERFORMANCE
PENALTY; FILE
MOUNTS ON NON-
LINUX OSES
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12. ONE MORE THING
THAT CAN GO
WRONG
12

13. THE --RM FLAG
e.g. docker run --rm gradle:jdk8 gradle test build
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14. MOUNT CURRENT
WORKING
DIRECTORY INTO
YOUR BUILD
CONTAINER
e.g. docker run –v `pwd`:/root/src gradle:jdk8 gradle test build
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15. PASS CURRENT USER
INTO CONTAINER TO
PREVENT FILE
PERMISSION ISSUES
e.g. docker run –v `pwd`:/root/src –u `id –u`:`id –g` gradle:jdk8 gradle build
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16. PASS CURRENT USER
INTO CONTAINER TO
PREVENT FILE
PERMISSION ISSUES
e.g. docker run –v `pwd`:/root/src –u `id –u`:`id –g` gradle:jdk8 gradle build
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17. USING
DOCKER-COMPOSE
e.g. docker-compose run buildRunner gradle test build
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18. TESTING YOUR
CONTAINER
https://github.com/zuazo/dockerspec
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19. THIS IS PRETTY
NEAT, MAYBE TRY IT
OUT?
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20. THANK YOU
Questions, comments, or feedback?
jmthomas@thoughtworks.com