Docker Best Practices

Over the years, I’ve learned what separates good Docker practices from great ones. Here are the principles I follow.

1. Use Specific Base Image Tags

❌ Bad:

FROM node:latest

✅ Good:

FROM node:18-alpine

Why? latest can break your builds unexpectedly.

# Combine RUN commands to reduce layers
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    curl \
    git \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

node_modules
.git
.env
.DS_Store

RUN useradd -m appuser
USER appuser