I continue to enjoy using Docker to encapsulate developer tooling so that it doesn’t pollute my laptop with varying versions of software I don’t use regularly. (See Jonathan Bergknoff’s Run More Stuff in Docker and Andrew Welch’s Docker for all the things for further justification.)
In addition to using Andrew Welch’s vitejs-docker-dev project for Javascript development, I converted a couple of my personal projects to use a Dockerfile. I have submitted PRs to the upstream repo’s to incorporate the Dockerfile – we’ll see if they are accepted.
- RPM Test – responsiveness test tool for network latency
- Wireguard Vanity Address – creates a Wireguard public key with an easily-recognizable prefix.
- TrackR-Web-Bluetooth-API – reverse engineering the API for the TrackR Pixel gizmo that helps you find your lost keys
- Unifi-Controller – Instructions for a pre-built Docker container that runs on a Raspberry Pi
TL;DR Using a Docker container for these tools doesn’t really get in the way. Startup may be slightly slower (adding a second or so), but otherwise these tools run plenty fast. Plus, Docker eliminates a whole raft of hassles getting the software installed, and maintaining it across OS upgrades (say, on my laptop). I’m content.
Update: I am now contributing to the PRQL project. They have a highly-developed Docker container that encapsulates the build tools which mean that all the versions of Rust, Javascript, and other tools are isolated from my host operating system.