Erlang/Elixir on Alpine Linux
Alpine Linux is a lightweight Linux distribution built around musl libc and busybox. The main focus of this distribution is security, simplicity and resource efficiency. All that makes Alpine Linux perfect to work as base images for linux containers.
This is based on work for msaraiva/erlang but includes an init system for PID 1 and DNS fixes for Alpine's lack of support for search in resolv.conf.
See Erlang/Elixir on Alpine Linux to learn more about creating minimal Erlang/Elixir docker images with Alpine Linux.
Notice: This image does not contain git, wget, rebar or hex. If you need to download dependencies, see pmbauer/elixir-dev
The following packages are pre-installed:
- erlang + dependencies
- elixir
Notice: In order to keep images as compact as possible, Erlang libraries for Alpine Linux are split into many different packages. The full list of Erlang packages available can be found here
Usage
$ docker run --rm -it albertchan/elixir iex
Erlang/OTP 18 [erts-7.1] [source] [64-bit] [async-threads:10] [kernel-poll:false]
Interactive Elixir (1.2.2) - press Ctrl+C to exit (type h() ENTER for help)
iex(1)> IO.puts "Hello there!"
Hello there!
:ok
iex(2)>
Getting started (WIP)
Packages
In order to keep packages as compact as possible, Erlang libraries for Alpine Linux are split into many different packages. The full list of Erlang packages available can be found here.
What is apk?
The apk command is the official tool for package management on Alpine Linux. Something like apt-get on Ubuntu. More information about apk can be found here.
Installing packages with apk
Create a Dockerfile
FROM alpine:3.5
RUN apk --update add erlang && rm -rf /var/cache/apk/*
CMD ["/bin/sh"]Build the image:
$ docker build -t erlang .
Run docker images. You should see something like:
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED VIRTUAL SIZE
erlang latest d76965a1f753 4 seconds ago 18.3 MB
Building packages
You can see how packages are built by looking at the APKBUILD scripts:
For more info, see http://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/APKBUILD_Reference
Patches
If you take a look at the APKBUILD scripts, you'll notice that some patches are applied in order to successfully build the packages. Some of those patches are related to musl, some to Busybox and some just split or remove stuff to make packages smaller.