For me, it wasnt until I ported an existing project into Docker that I began to understand the big picture.

Hypothetically, it offers all the benefits of virtualized development environments like Vagrant (stable, re-creatable, isolated, etc.) but requires fewer resources.

Alternatively, running two or more virtual machines at once can eat up all of my computers resources.

What To Use Docker For On How To Integrate It

Then I went to DockerCon this April, which finally gave me enough momentum to figure out how to integrate it into my development workflow.

This may be due to running asset pipelines like those of Rails or Ember that generate tons of temporary files.

Searching the shared files from the host can be slow, to say nothing of editor tooling with compiled languages like TypeScript or C.

What To Use Docker For On Code Live In

Additionally, having the code live in something as ephemeral as a Docker container seems like a bad idea.

Plus, rsync is one way, so changes on the container will not be reflected on the host (e.g.

Rails generators).

Of course, there are other options in this space such as Unison, that are bi-directional.

And youve got to find a way to get all your favorite Vim or Emacs configs into the container.

This solution also suffers from the same drawbacks as SSHFS with regard to code living the container.

You could develop in a windowed Linux environment (native or virtual) that functions as the Docker machine.

File sharing between the Docker machine and containers is extremely fast.

But if you want to stay in MacOS and use Docker, I have a few tips to make your life better.

Rsync and unison allow you to exclude subdirectories, so you can ignore.tmp,.nodemodules,.dist, and so on.

This gem even takes file sharing a step farther, using Docker volumes in conjunction with rsyncunison for optimum performance.

Its important to remember that this wipes whatever you ADD ed during the build.

So, for example, if you add a gem to your Gemfile and bundle install, youll eventually need to rebuild your base image.

Also, if you are using rsync, youll need to docker cp the automatically updated Gemfile.lock back out of the container to the host.

The improvements for reading speed are coming soon, but last I checked, the improvements for writing speed (the more common problem in my experience) are still a ways out.

I noticed this when our Rails database migrations took around 10 times longer to run on Docker for Mac versus native.

Running the script brought performance back to approximately the same as native.

Hopefully, this issue will be fixed soon, and the script will be unnecessary.

What To Use Docker For On Mac