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0 pointsyebyen10y ago0 comments

I'm sure this is not the answer you are looking for, but you can 'docker export' a container to a tar file and examine your image file that way.

(1) You're exporting a container, not an image, so if you wanted to export your image, deploy it to a container first. Run echo or some other noop if you need to.

(2) This is similar to how git operates. You wouldn't want to examine your git commits interactively (assuming that means the ability to change them in place) well, if you did, git has --amend, but no such thing exists in Docker.

An image with a given id is supposed to be permanent and unchanging, containers change and can be re-committed, but images don't change. They just have children.

It can get hairy when you reach the image layer limit, because using up the last allowed image layer means you can't deploy to a container anymore. So, how do you export the image? 'docker save' -- but 'docker save' exports the image and all of its parent layers separately. (you need to flatten it, for example?)

I once wrote this horrible script[1] whose only purpose was unrolling this mess, since the latest image had the important state that I wanted in it, but I needed the whole image -- so, untar them all in reverse order and then you have the latest everything in a single directory that represents your image filesystem.

The horror of this script leads me to believe this is an oversight as well, but a wise docker guru probably once said "your first mistake was keeping any state in your container at all."

[1]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yebyen/urbinit/del/doit.sh

0 comments

fragmede10y ago

Given stupid hacks, like "Run echo or some other noop if you need to" to go from an image to a container, and 'docker commit' to go back from a container to an image, the distinction between a docker image and docker container seems a bit academic and a bit of poor UX rather than anything else.

yebyenOP10y ago

Not really, containers are disposable and images (at least tags) are somewhat less disposable. Containers are singular, malleable units and represent a processes' running state, images are atomic and composable, inert, basically packages.

You wouldn't say that the difference between a live database and its binaries compiled source code is academic, would you?

I agree that it would make more sense if you could dump the image to a flat file with a single verb. I also think docker needs an interface to stop a pull in progress that has stalled or is no longer needed. These are academic concerns, you can submit a pull request.

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