In this blog, you will learn some Docker best practices mainly focussed on Java applications. This is not only a theoretical exercise, but you will learn how to apply the best practices to your Dockerfiles. Enjoy!

1. Introduction

Writing Dockerfiles seems easy: just pick an example from the internet and customize it to fit your needs. However, many examples are good for a development environment but are not production worthy. A production environment has more strict requirements especially concerning security. Besides that, Docker also provides guidelines for writing good Dockerfiles. It is just like writing code: you may know the syntax, but that does not mean you can write clean and good code in that specific programming language. The same applies to Dockerfiles. With this blog, you will learn some best practices, guidelines you can apply when writing Dockerfiles. The previous sentence deliberately says can apply and not must apply. It all depends on your use case.