The simplest way to write Dockerfile!

Kevin Wan
2 min readDec 12, 2020

1. choose a simple linux image

For example alpine, it's only about 5MB.

2. set timezone if necessary

RUN apk add --no-cache tzdata
ENV TZ America/New_York

3. multi-stage build

  • the first stage to build the binary, ensure the binary is dev box independent
  • use the binary in the first stage to build the final image

4. the simplest way to write Dockerfile

  • first of all, install the tool goctl

GO111MODULE=on go get -u github.com/tal-tech/go-zero/tools/goctl

  • in project greet, create a service called hello

goctl api new hello

  • file structure listed below:
greet
├── go.mod
├── go.sum
└── service
└── hello
├── etc
│ └── hello-api.yaml
├── hello.api
├── hello.go
└── internal
├── config
│ └── config.go
├── handler
│ ├── hellohandler.go
│ └── routes.go
├── logic
│ └── hellologic.go
├── svc
│ └── servicecontext.go
└── types
└── types.go
  • in dir hello, one shot to generate Dockerfile

goctl docker -go hello.go

  • the content of Dockerfile like:
FROM golang:alpine AS builder

LABEL stage=gobuilder

ENV CGO_ENABLED 0
ENV GOOS linux

WORKDIR /build/zero

ADD go.mod .
ADD go.sum .
RUN go mod download
COPY . .
COPY service/hello/etc /app/etc
RUN go build -ldflags="-s -w" -o /app/hello service/hello/hello.go


FROM alpine

RUN apk update --no-cache && apk add --no-cache ca-certificates tzdata
ENV TZ America/New_York

WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=builder /app/hello /app/hello
COPY --from=builder /app/etc /app/etc

CMD ["./hello", "-f", "etc/hello-api.yaml"]
  • in dir greet, build the final image

docker build -t hello:v1 -f service/hello/Dockerfile .

  • check the image

hello v1 5455f2eaea6b 7 minutes ago 18.1MB

the image size is like 18MB.

  • start the service

docker run --rm -it -p 8888:8888 hello:v1

  • test the service
$ curl -i http://localhost:8888/from/you
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 2020 06:03:02 GMT
Content-Length: 14

{"message":""}

5. conclusion

goctl greatly simplifies the writing of Dockerfile. The generated Dockerfile is state-of-art and can be used directly. Also, you can customized the Dockerfile template in $HOME/.goctl/docker if necessary.

If it helps, welcome to star the project. 🤝

6. go-zero

https://github.com/tal-tech/go-zero/blob/master/readme-en.md

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