docker-expert

When to Use

• Creating or optimizing a Dockerfile for any project.
• Setting up or reviewing docker-compose.yml for local development or production.
• Troubleshooting container security, large image sizes, or slow build times.
• Implementing multi-stage builds to separate dependencies from runtime.

Critical Patterns

• Security First (Non-Root): NEVER run containers as root. Always create and switch to a non-root user via the USER instruction.
• Secrets over Env Vars: Use Docker Secrets (secrets:) for sensitive data in docker-compose.yml rather than plain environment variables.
• Multi-Stage Builds: Always separate the builder (compilation, dependency fetching) from the final runtime image. Do not ship build tools to production.
• Minimal Attack Surface: Prefer alpine, slim, or distroless base images.
• Supply Chain Integrity: Pin base image versions down to the digest (e.g., alpine:3.21@sha256:xyz...).
• Layer Caching: Order instructions by frequency of change. Copy and install dependencies before copying the rest of the source code.
• One Layer Operations: Chain apt-get update with apt-get install using && and clear the cache (rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*) in the exact same RUN command.

Code Examples

Optimized Multi-Stage Dockerfile

# Stage 1: Build & Dependencies
FROM node:18-alpine AS deps
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN --mount=type=cache,target=/root/.npm \
    npm ci --only=production

# Stage 2: Build source
FROM node:18-alpine AS build
WORKDIR /app
COPY package*.json ./
RUN npm ci
COPY . .
RUN npm run build && npm prune --production

# Stage 3: Runtime
FROM node:18-alpine AS runtime
# Create non-root user explicitly
RUN addgroup -g 1001 -S nodejs && adduser -S appuser -u 1001 -G nodejs
WORKDIR /app

# Copy only what is strictly necessary
COPY --from=deps --chown=appuser:nodejs /app/node_modules ./node_modules
COPY --from=build --chown=appuser:nodejs /app/dist ./dist

# Drop privileges
USER appuser

EXPOSE 3000
HEALTHCHECK --interval=30s --timeout=10s --start-period=5s --retries=3 \
  CMD wget --no-verbose --tries=1 --spider http://localhost:3000/health || exit 1

CMD ["node", "dist/index.js"]

Production-Ready Compose Pattern

version: '3.8'
services:
  app:
    build:
      context: .
      target: runtime
    depends_on:
      db:
        condition: service_healthy
    networks:
      - frontend
      - backend
    deploy:
      resources:
        limits:
          cpus: '0.5'
          memory: 512M

  db:
    image: postgres:15-alpine
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB_FILE: /run/secrets/db_name
      POSTGRES_USER_FILE: /run/secrets/db_user
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD_FILE: /run/secrets/db_password
    secrets:
      - db_name
      - db_user
      - db_password
    networks:
      - backend
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U ${POSTGRES_USER}"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 5

networks:
  frontend:
  backend:
    internal: true

secrets:
  db_name:
    external: true
  db_user:
    external: true
  db_password:
    external: true

Commands

# Clean builds with no cache
docker build --pull --no-cache -t my-app:latest .

# Validate Compose configuration
docker-compose config

# Check local image sizes and tags
docker images --format "table {{.Repository}}\t{{.Tag}}\t{{.Size}}"

Resources

• Templates: See assets/.dockerignore for a production-ready .dockerignore template to optimize build context.