mhart

Alpine Node

Minimal Node.js Docker Images built on Alpine Linux
Under MIT License
By mhart

nodejs docker alpine

Minimal Node.js Docker Images

Versions v16.4.2, v14.17.3, v12.22.3, v10.24.1, v8.17.0, v6.17.1, v4.9.1, v0.12.18 and v0.10.48 –
built on Alpine Linux.


All versions use the one mhart/alpine-node repository,
but each version aligns with the following tags (ie, mhart/alpine-node:<tag>). The sizes are for the
unpacked images as reported by Docker – compressed sizes are about 1/3 of these:



Examples

```console
$ docker run --rm mhart/alpine-node:14 node --version
v14.17.3


$ docker run --rm mhart/alpine-node:12 node --version
v12.22.3


$ docker run --rm mhart/alpine-node:14 npm --version
6.14.13


$ docker run --rm mhart/alpine-node:14 yarn --version
1.22.10


$ docker run --rm mhart/alpine-node:slim-14 node --version
v14.17.3


$ docker run --rm mhart/alpine-node:slim-12 node --version
v12.22.3
```


Example Dockerfile for your own Node.js project

If you're doing your npm install/npm ci or yarn install from your
Dockerfile, then you'll probably want to add node_modules to your
.dockerignore file first, so that it doesn't get sent to the docker daemon.


For the smallest builds, use a multi-stage build – where you install your
modules using the full install image, but then create your app using the slim
image – this can reduce the size of your final image by ~35MB or so.


```Dockerfile


This stage installs our modules

FROM mhart/alpine-node:12
WORKDIR /app
COPY package.json package-lock.json ./


If you have native dependencies, you'll need extra tools
RUN apk add --no-cache make gcc g++ python3

RUN npm ci --prod


Then we copy over the modules from above onto a slim image

FROM mhart/alpine-node:slim-12


If possible, run your container using docker run --init
Otherwise, you can use tini:
RUN apk add --no-cache tini
ENTRYPOINT ["/sbin/tini", "--"]

WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=0 /app .
COPY . .
CMD ["node", "index.js"]
```


If you can't do multi-stage builds, then you can just do everything on a "full
install" image:


```Dockerfile
FROM mhart/alpine-node:12


If possible, run your container using docker run --init
Otherwise, you can use tini:
RUN apk add --no-cache tini
ENTRYPOINT ["/sbin/tini", "--"]

WORKDIR /app
COPY . .


If you have native dependencies, you'll need extra tools
RUN apk add --no-cache make gcc g++ python3

RUN npm ci --prod


CMD ["node", "index.js"]
```


Caveats

As Alpine Linux uses musl, you may run into some issues with environments
expecting glibc-like behavior – especially if you try to use binaries compiled
with glibc. You should recompile these binaries to use musl (compiling on
Alpine is probably the easiest way to do this).


If you get an error similar to error loading shared library
ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, it may be that you have dependencies relying on libc –
you can try to fix this by adding RUN apk add --no-cache libc6-compat or
RUN ln -s /lib/libc.musl-x86_64.so.1 /lib/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 to your
Dockerfile.


Inspired by: