Create a minimal variant?

[chorrell]

A few months ago I was at DockerCon and @proppy asked if it was possible to statically compile Node.js and use the resulting binary to create a very small Docker image with just Node.js. I'm in SF this week and during a hack-a-thon at Joyent I put that out there and it turns out it's pretty easy:

https://hub.docker.com/r/joshwilsdon/nodejs/

I took the above and put together a rough build process/proof-of-concept:

https://hub.docker.com/r/chorrell/node-minimal/

I think this would be an interesting variant we could provide. It would require a some doc on how to use it and how to use it as a base for other images.

[proppy]

It would be neat to package the binary as a signed layer-ready tarball on every nodejs release.

That way we could just to ADD node-layer-latest.tar.gz to provide the official minimal variant.
And also do something like https://github.com/kubernetes/contrib/tree/master/go2docker to build a docker image for node.js app without docker :)

[lucamaraschi]

👍

[retrohacker]

Duplicate of the work being done here: #46

Building from Alpine and scratch have similar requirements.