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Comment by returningfory2 | Hacker News Reader

> 9. Use docker-slim to remove unnecessary files

Doesn't this, in practice, make the Docker image size situation worse? Docker caches images in layers and reuses e.g. base layers for all operations. Creating a custom single-layer image for each of your binaries negates all the benefits of the layered caching. You have to download the full image on each pull, rather than just the diffs.

Conversely, when I pull the Docker image for an updated version of my software, I typically only have to pull the last few small layers because the base image hasn't changed.

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> ... I typically only have to pull the last few small layers because the base image hasn't changed.

That probably depends on your circumstances! For example, you could use a particular OS image as your base, software with updates as a set of intermediate layers and your software and whatever else you need as the last ones. That way, leaving the layers as they are would indeed result in some pretty good efficiency, since only the changed layers would need to be pulled.

Whereas if you base your software on a particular runtime image, e.g. OpenJDK or one of its varieties, then it's unlikely that you'll see such nice benefits, at least if you'll regularly update the version of the base image that you're using. Now, whether you should update everything that often in lieu of any serious security vulnerabilities, however, is another question.

I agree. I would say that the reason for using docker-slim should be motivated more by security considerations, than trying to reduce the overall image size. If you want to uphold the highest security, you would very regularly (e.g. every couple of days) invalidate the very first (or second layer), because you would be re-pulling the latest base image, and additionally run something like "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade".

So, in the end, using docker-slim does make image downloads (and container start-up time) _less_ efficient in those specific cases where you are releasing new images very often (e.g. daily, or even multiple times per day), assuming that the base image is released less often (e.g. weekly of monthly, as is e.g. the case for Python).

One of the future capabilities will be auto-generating base images. It'll require several images to figure out the right base image. The easy version of it be will be available in Slim SaaS (it'll have enough data for it). Happy to chat more about the details.

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