getting started with docker

October 09, 2017

Learning about docker this weekend… it always is hard to find resources for people who understand the concepts of VMs and containers and need to dive into something just a little bit complicated. I had been through lots of intro tutorials, when docker first arrived on the scene, and was seeking to set up a hosted dev instance for existing open source project which already had a docker set up.

Here’s an outline of the key concepts:

docker-machine: commands to create and manage VMs, whether locally or on a remote server
docker: commands to talk to your active VM that is already set up with docker-machine
docker-compose: a way to create and manage multiple containers on a docker-machine

As happens, I see parallels between human spoken language and new technical terms, which makes sense since these are things made by and for humans. The folks who made Docker invented a kind of language for us to talk to their software.

I felt like I was learning to read in a new language, like pig-latin, where words have a prefix of docker, like some kind of honorific

They use docker- to speak to VMs locally or remotely, and docker (without a dash) is an intimate form of communication with your active VM

Writing notes here, so I remember when I pick this up again. If there are Docker experts reading this, I’d be interested to know if I got this right and if there are other patterns or naming conventions that might help fast-track my learning of this new dialect for deploying apps in this land of containers and virtual machines.

Also, if a kind and generous soul wants to help an open source project, I’ve written up my work-in-progress steps for setting up OpenOpps-platform dev instance and would appreciate any advice, and of course, would welcome a pull request.