Tag

#dockerfile

2 stories tagged dockerfile.

Bar chart comparing container image sizes versus virtual machine image sizes. Alpine container at 5 MB, slim Python at 45 MB, full Python at 1,000 MB, and virtual machine at 20,000 MB, illustrating the Docker container vs virtual machine size gap.

Docker container vs virtual machine: what changes

A Docker container vs virtual machine comparison: containers share the host kernel and run isolated processes in megabytes, while VMs virtualize hardware and carry a full OS in gigabytes. The right base image and layer order cut a 2 GB image to under 100 MB.

Lars Cornelissen · Aug 13, 2026

Docker rebuild time drops 81 percent from 37.4 seconds to 7.1 seconds when dependency installation is cached separately from source code changes. The primary keyword is how to write a Dockerfile.

Engineering

How to write a Dockerfile that does not waste your time

To write a Dockerfile that builds fast, order instructions from least to most frequently changing. Copy dependency files before source code so Docker reuses cached layers. Reordering two lines cut rebuild time 81 percent, from 37.4 to 7.1 seconds.

Lars Cornelissen · Aug 13, 2026