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Containerisation is imho a bit misrepresented

Open yarikoptic opened this issue 5 years ago • 3 comments

While working out https://github.com/Pfern/OSODOS/pull/27 and reading the opening of that paragraph

**containerisation** - a more lightweight solution for bundling tools that are
otherwise difficult to install is offered by "containerisation"

Although it is true, it is just a single use case, and may be not even that common or prominent reason in at least scientific computing. I have some experience (a Debian developer) with managing software dependencies, and overall systems administration etc., so I have no difficulty to install tools (as many others who use some good Linux distribution which comes with many packages available already). I do love containers for a variety of other reasons though

  • experimentation -- so easy and fast to get into another (Linux) environment I would otherwise spend hours installing/configuring if it was a fully fledged virtual machine
  • reproducible computing -- even having captured full provenance (in a provisioning script or alike), deploying it for real use is too tedious and fragile (services could go down, versions disappear etc). Having a container image - I can always get that environment (e.g. if I keep it also under version control system. if not -- success might vary ;-)).
  • portable computing -- I can transfer container image to another HPC or into the cloud and perform necessary computing without demanding (re)configuring that environment for my needs
  • collaboration -- we do use the same "computing" pieces while using different base OS

Virtualization is unnecessarily too heavy for any of those use cases, and thus in my world its use is greatly diminished.

So I think that this paragraph should be reword a little to reflect advantages of containers better.

yarikoptic avatar Apr 05 '19 01:04 yarikoptic