Re: process supervisor - considerations for docker

From: John Regan <john_at_jrjrtech.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2015 11:57:04 -0600

Sweet. And yeah, as Laurent mentioned in the other email, it's the
weekend. Setting dates for this kind of stuff is hard to do, I just
work on this in my free time. It's done when it's done.

I also agree that s6 is *not* a docker-specific tool, nor should it
be. I'm thankful that Laurent's willing to listen to any ideas we
might have re: s6 development, but like I said, the goal is *not*
"make s6 a docker-specific tool"

There's still a few high-level decisions to be made, too, before we
really start any work:

1. Goals:
  * Are we going to make a series of s6 baseimages (like one
  based on Ubuntu, another on CentOS, Alpine, and so on)?
  * Should we pick a base distro and focus on creating a series of
  platform-oriented images, aimed more at developers (ie, a PHP image, a
  NodeJS image, etc)?
  * Or should be focus on creating a series of service-oriented
  images, ie, an image for running GitLab, an image for running an
  XMPP server, etc?

Figuring out the overall, high-level focus early will be really
helpful in the long run.

Options 2 and 3 are somewhat related - you can't really get to 3
(create service-oriented images) without getting through 2 (make
platform-oriented images) anyway.

It's not like a goal would be set in stone, either. If more guys want
to get on board and help, we could alway sit down and re-evaluate.
With more manpower, you could get into doing a whole series of
distro-based, service-oriented images (ie, a Ubuntu XMPP server as
well as an Alpine XMPP server).

But given we're just a few guys, setting a straightforward small focus
is probably the way to go. I would vote for either creating a series
of baseimages, oriented towards other image-makers, or pick Alpine as
a base, and focus on making small and efficient service-oriented
images (ie, a 10MB XMPP service, something like that) aimed at
sysadmins/users.

But I'm open to any of those options, or others, so long as it's
within the realm of possibility for just a few people working in their
free time.

1. Should be form a GitHub org, and what should it be called?

I vote yes, I'll go ahead and make it if you want.

For the org name, I was thinking about starting a series of Alpine
images aimed at users (like I said, 10MB chat service) under the org
name "micro-d" (as in, Micro Docker containers), already. If that's the
focus we go with, then that's probably a pretty OK name.

If we go with doing a series of simple, easy-to-use baseimages aimed
at other imagemakers, then probably something like "simple-d" (Simple
Docker containers).

Again, open to suggestions, those are just my initial ideas. The one
thing I would advise against is using s6 in the name, since that
would imply it's a project under the skarnet.org umbrella, which I
don't think this is. It's outside that scope. We can promote how much
we love s6 all we want in the docs, and blog posts, and so on, but
we *shouldn't* do things like call our init "s6-init", name the image
"s6-alpine", stuff like that.

Once we figure out the high-level goals, we can set out a few more
structural-type things.

-John
Received on Sat Feb 28 2015 - 17:57:04 UTC