margussipria/alpine-node repository overview

⁠Minimal Node.js Docker Image

Version v7.9.0 built on Alpine Linux⁠.

All versions use the one margussipria/alpine-node⁠ repository, but each version aligns with the following tags (ie, margussipria/alpine-node:<tag>). The sizes are for the unpacked images as reported by Docker – compressed sizes are about 1/3 of these:

• Full install built with npm:
  • 7, 7.9, 7.9.0 – 54.7 MB (npm 4.2.0)

⁠Examples

$ docker run margussipria/alpine-node:7 node --version
v7.9.0

$ docker run margussipria/alpine-node:7 npm --version
4.2.0

⁠Example Dockerfile for your own Node.js project

If you don't have any native dependencies, ie only depend on pure-JS npm modules, then my suggestion is to run npm install locally before running docker build (and make sure node_modules isn't in your .dockerignore) – then you don't need an npm install step in your Dockerfile and you don't need npm installed in your Docker image – so you can use one of the smaller base* images. (see mhart/alpine-node:base-7⁠)

FROM margussipria/alpine-node:7

WORKDIR /src
ADD . .

# If you have native dependencies, you'll need extra tools
# RUN apk add --no-cache --virtual .build-deps make gcc g++ python \
#   && npm install \
#   && apk del .build-deps

EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["node", "index.js"]

⁠Caveats

As Alpine Linux uses musl, you may run into some issues with environments expecting glibc-like behavior – especially if you try to use binaries compiled with glibc. You should recompile these binaries to use musl (compiling on Alpine is probably the easiest way to do this).

Inspired by:

• https://github.com/alpinelinux/aports/blob/454db196/main/nodejs/APKBUILD⁠
• https://github.com/alpinelinux/aports/blob/454db196/main/libuv/APKBUILD⁠
• https://hub.docker.com/r/ficusio/nodejs-base/~/dockerfile/⁠