April 2019: Deployment discussion

calendar Apr 22, 2019 · 2 min read · docker containers deployment video  ·
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Meetup #59. Please RSVP at Meetup.

We get started at 6:30 pm.

Sponsors

Venue provided by Startup Edmonton.

Food sponsored by Bellstone Engineering.

Talks

Go and Docker

Peter Preeper gave a hands-on introduction to packaging Go applications as Docker containers, starting with why Go is a good fit (statically compiled, single binary, garbage collection, CSP-style concurrency) and what containerization offers over VMs (smaller images, less configuration, reusable base images). He compared Dockerfile strategies: the convenience of golang:onbuild versus the control of FROM golang:latest, then showed how to shrink images dramatically with FROM scratch. The scratch approach required static linking (CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux go build -a) and hit a real-world snag — the HTTPS request to edmontongo.org failed because the image had no CA certificates, fixed by copying ca-certificates.crt into the container. The takeaway was to use scratch plus static linking to build tiny containers for microservices.

Key points:

  • Go produces a single statically linked binary — ideal for containers.
  • golang:onbuild is quick but bloated and gives little control.
  • golang:latest/version images give build control but add many layers.
  • FROM scratch yields the smallest images.
  • Static linking (CGO_ENABLED=0 GOOS=linux) is required for scratch.
  • Copy ca-certificates.crt for TLS/HTTPS to work in a scratch image.
  • Use scratch + static linking for micro-containers/microservices.

Peter Preeper (code)

Deployment Discussion

Deployment Discussion: All attendees will be invited to share their experience with deploying Go services.

Video

Video: Either Errors in Go 2 by Marcel Van Lohuizen, or Absolute Unit (Test) by Dave Cheney.

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