Earlier this month I mentioned on Mastodon that I was replacing a Docker-based local development environment at my day job with a Nix-based one, orchestrated with overmind and a justfile. There was quite a lot of interest in particular in how overmind and just could be used to replace a container / compose-based local development. While I can’t share the details of the significantly more complex migration I did at my day job (yet!

Some folks on the internet were interested in how I had managed to ditch Docker for local development. This is a slightly overdue write up on how I typically do things now with Nix, Overmind and Just.

  • EthanEnglish
    9•11 months ago

    My point is that Docker Desktop is entirely optional. On Linux you can run Docker Engine natively, on Windows you can run it in WSL, and on macOS you can run it in a VM with Docker Engine, or via something like hyperkit and minikube. And Docker Engine (and the CLI) is FOSS.

    • JeezyOPEnglish
      5•11 months ago

      I understood your point, and while there are situations where it can be optional, in a context and scale of hundreds of developers, who mostly don’t have any real docker knowledge, and who work almost exclusively on macOS, let alone enough to set up and maintain alternatives to Docker Desktop, the only practical option becomes to pay the licensing fees to enable the path of least resistance.

      • MartinEnglish
        9•11 months ago

        We are over 1000 developers and use docker ce just fine. We use a self hosted repository for our images. IT is configuring new computers to use this internal docker repository by default. So new employees don’t even have to know about it to do their first docker build.

        We all use Linux on our workstations and laptops. That might make it easier.

        • JeezyOPEnglish
          3•11 months ago

          We all use Linux on our workstations and laptops. That might make it easier.

          You are living my dream!

          I think this is the key piece; the experience of Docker on Linux (including WSL if it’s not hooking into Docker Desktop on Windows) and on macOS is just so wildly difference when it comes to performance, reliability and stability.

        • @Von_BroheimEnglish
          0•11 months ago

          Op comes off a bit, uninformed. E.g. I use docker engine and docker compose inside WSL2 on windows and performance is fine, then I use Intellij to manage images/containers, the service tab handles the basics. If I need to do anything very involved I use the cli.

          Docker is fine, the docker desktop panic really only revealed who never took the time to learn how to use docker and what the alternative UIs are.