Can Discourse ship frequent Docker images that do not need to be bootstrapped?

[wojtek]

@featheredtoast

For a simple plugin sure, but we cannot assume a plugin is going to look a certain way - some plugins need additional setup, extra gems to install, or extra gem dependencies or external programs requiring an apt-get install. That should get baked into a custom image.

hmm… for a language/environment that should be universal and platform independent, relying on underlying OS package manager seems quite odd…

@featheredtoast

re: Web updating, Discourse operators are also not expected to know CLI or docker at all.

This is what referred to previously, that Discourse seems to be quite firmly set in the “old” way of managing PHP software/forums

@pfaffman

But that’s way too complicated for someone who doesn’t know a lot more about Discourse than I think you want to know. And there are many, many things that can go wrong, which is why the current solution, which is horrible for all of the reasons you outline, is the best solution for thousands of people who don’t know what bash is.

For the most part, you only ever need to ./launcher rebuild app, except once every couple of years when you need to upgrade the database, so you have to do that twice. You just can’t get that level of simplicity with docker-compose. There’s a chance that if docker-compose were usable when they started, they could have it instead of having to make their own, but that’s not the way things worked out.

So, to sum up the whole discussion (and possibly put that in the first message to avoid going over it ad nauseum ):

1. Discourse is tailored and focused on “regular folks” and the whole setup is geared towards catering to their needs
2. Given how Ruby (enviroment) is kinda weird and (1) it’s virtually impossible to provide generic enough official docker images in official Discourse repository

correct?