Chapter Summary

In this chapter, we learned how to containerize an application.

We pulled some application code from a remote Git repo. The repo included the application code as well as a Dockerfile containing instructions on how to build the application into an image. We learned the basics of how Dockerfiles work and fed one into a docker image build command to create a new image.

Once the image was created, we started a container from it and tested it with a web browser.

After that, we saw how multi-stage builds give us a simple way to build and ship smaller images to our production environments.

We also learned that Dockerfile is a great tool for documenting an app. As such, it can speed-up the on-boarding of new developers and bridge the divide between developers and operations staff. With this in mind, treat it like code and check it in and out of a source control system.

Although the example cited was a Linux-based example, the process for containerizing Windows apps is the same: start with your app code, create a Dockerfile describing the app, and build the image with docker image build. The job is done!