Wednesday, Jul 26, 2017
The use of tools seems to have exploded in the past few years. Simple web applications take 5 tools just to build and more complex setup are even more prevalent. Add to that that we also end up configuring our tools to better suit our needs and you are faced with a big dependency problem. How do you manage those dependencies? My most recent answer is Docker.
It’s not easy for developers and users to use tools Tools were invented to make doing tasks easier. And in software we often abstract those tools further. However, making sure that everyone can use those tools is challenging. Just look at how long people spend setting up machines and every time they have a new project the mess starts again. It’s not easy for developers and users to use tools. Onboarding
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Tuesday, Jun 13, 2017
Docker. You know that I love it. I guess maybe sometimes I love it a little too much because on some of my test servers I have been filling up a lot of GB with new images and containers. All of which hang around indefinitely if you don’t clear them. Add to that if you have a continuous integration pipeline that builds a new container every time you do a commit/push and you have an ever growing disk of redundant Docker containers and images.
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Sunday, Jun 4, 2017
The most recent buzz word around is digital, however, it is often used as a catch all term for almost anything that is related to computers. So, what is the scope of digital and where do different roles exist inside the landscape?
Generally speaking, I term digital to be anything that uses the wider Internet, however, that does not mean anything that is networked. So, simply accessing a file server is not using digital services, however, using a web application to access a file server is.
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Friday, Apr 14, 2017
TL; DR. Coding standards are about more that the code on the screen, in the application. They are about culture, trust and collaboration. Smell and readability.
So, coding standards, fun topic eh. Arguing over tabs and spaces (check out Silicon Valley if you haven’t already) for alignment of your code. It may seem like a bit of a petty idea to begin with. However, what I believe is that coding standards should give you better tools as a team to be able to collaborate. To share coding ideas easily and to quickly be able to trust new members or new projects.
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Thursday, Dec 29, 2016
Making your own containers can be a super useful way of not only understanding more about docker, but also for understanding more about the systems administration of your applications or docker images. Maybe you want a specific container for running configured services on your machine, or maybe you want to look at packaging your entire system inside a docker container to make it super easy to run. In this quick post, I am going to dover making a Dockerfile and also what to write in it so that you can start making your own containers, today!
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Wednesday, Dec 14, 2016
As we have already discussed Docker is a great way to isolate your environment and stop items from crashing into each other. Following on from my last post about running tools from inside a container, we looked at running stuff into your container. Now I am going to have some real life examples. I already expect that you know how to mount your files/directories into the container (-v) and how to assign your workdir (-w), so if you don’t have a look at the last post.
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Wednesday, Dec 14, 2016
So far we have been discussing using containers, largely from inside the container. However, sometimes you simply want to use tools from inside your docker container rather than having the dependency nightmare of having everything installed locally (or on your server).
Attaching/mounting into your Docker container The process of attaching or mounting local files into your container will give you the ability to use those files inside your container. Or store new files created from inside your container to the local file system. This can be really useful in two ways. Firstly, you can look at using the container to run processes such as npm/yarn or composer or ruby gems or you can look at services, such as a webserver. It gives you the ability to have multiple, separate installations of the same software, and simply and easily manage those processes or services with minimal pain of upgrade or management.
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Friday, Dec 9, 2016
So, you successfully have your containers and you have started to be able to run containers to do stuff. Brilliant. So let us drop into those containers and run something new. You are probably half way there with your understanding, maybe we could say that you have just opened the door on containers, well, you are just about to step in an see how big the room is! Containers give you great, little, isolated machines that you can do with as you please and then throw away.
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Friday, Dec 2, 2016
So, you have successfully installed Docker. Brilliant! Now, what?! Well, the obvious thing to do is to go about running some containers. The Docker documentation suggests that you should pull and run the Hello World container, and although it is small, there are much better things we can do straight away to start to show the power of Docker.
Docker Pull & Docker Hub To get started with running containers, you are first going to need to get some containers. As we have previously looked at containers contain all you need for a certain job or purpose, so with that in mind, let’s pull a really useful container. There are hundreds and thousands of containers available from Docker Hub, lets pull some of the most fun.
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Thursday, Dec 1, 2016
Unless you have been living under a metaphorical rock you will have heard about Docker. But although lots of people have heard of Docker, far fewer are using it day-to-day and even less in production. In this short post, I am going to go over what Docker (and containers are) and how you can start to get up and running with Docker.
What is Docker? Wikipedia describes Docker as:
Docker is an open-source project that automates the deployment of Linux applications inside software containers. Docker provides an additional layer of abstraction and automation of operating-system-level virtualization on Linux.
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