Smaller Base Image

Use the alpine variant of the official Node.js Docker image for building the image and serving the example REST API.

Other options for a smaller base image:

alpine                               3.21.3               12.1MB
bellsoft/alpaquita-linux-base        stream-musl          12.9MB
bellsoft/alpaquita-linux-base        stream-glibc         42.5MB
debian                               12.10-slim          113.0MB
registry.redhat.io/ubi9/ubi-minimal  9.5-1745855087      150.0MB

gcr.io/distroless/nodejs22-debian12  latest              210.0MB
node                                 22.15.0-alpine3.21  225.0MB
registry.redhat.io/ubi9/nodejs-22    9.5-1744136606      900.0MB

Branch

004-alpine

Diff

003-clean-modules…​004-alpine

Result

Image (MB) Layer Count node Binary (MB) node_modules (MB) Server (B)

Baseline

1740

22

116.0

51.0

2515

Previous

1630

24

116.0

11.0

2515

Result

243

21

118.1

10.9

2515

 
$ SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH=1 GITHUB_SHA="N/A" scripts/docker_build.sh -p linux/amd64 -t 004-alpine -n
...

$ docker images de.sdavids/sdavids-node-docker-image-slimming:004-alpine --format "{{.Repository}}\t{{.Tag}}\t{{.Size}}"
de.sdavids/sdavids-node-docker-image-slimming  004-alpine   243MB

$ docker run --rm de.sdavids/sdavids-node-docker-image-slimming:004-alpine du -hs /usr/local/bin/node
118.1M  /usr/local/bin/node

$ docker run --rm de.sdavids/sdavids-node-docker-image-slimming:004-alpine du -hs /node
11.0M /node

$ docker run --rm de.sdavids/sdavids-node-docker-image-slimming:004-alpine du -hs /node/node_modules
10.9M /node/node_modules

$ docker run --rm de.sdavids/sdavids-node-docker-image-slimming:004-alpine stat -c "%s" /node/server.mjs
2515

$ docker run --rm de.sdavids/sdavids-node-docker-image-slimming:004-alpine ls -A /node
healthcheck.mjs
node_modules
package-lock.json
package.json
scripts
server.mjs

$ docker image history --format "table {{.Size}}\t{{.CreatedBy}}" de.sdavids/sdavids-node-docker-image-slimming:004-alpine
SIZE      CREATED BY
0B        LABEL org.opencontainers.image.licenses=Apac…
0B        HEALTHCHECK &{["CMD-SHELL" "node /node/healt…
0B        CMD ["node" "server.mjs"]
0B        EXPOSE map[3000/tcp:{}]
0B        USER node:node
0B        ENV PORT=3000
0B        ENV NODE_ENV=production
16.4kB    COPY --chown=node:node src/js ./ # buildkit
15.5MB    RUN /bin/sh -c npm ci --omit=dev --omit=opti…
57.3kB    COPY --chown=node:node package.json package-…
16.4kB    COPY --chown=node:node scripts/macos_node_mo…
8.19kB    WORKDIR /node
0B        CMD ["node"]
0B        ENTRYPOINT ["docker-entrypoint.sh"]
20.5kB    COPY docker-entrypoint.sh /usr/local/bin/ # …
5.47MB    RUN /bin/sh -c apk add --no-cache --virtual …
0B        ENV YARN_VERSION=1.22.22
156MB     RUN /bin/sh -c addgroup -g 1000 node     && …
0B        ENV NODE_VERSION=22.15.0
0B        CMD ["/bin/sh"]
8.5MB     ADD alpine-minirootfs-3.21.3-x86_64.tar.gz /…

$ printf 'Layer Count: %s\n' "$(docker history de.sdavids/sdavids-node-docker-image-slimming:004-alpine | tail -n +2 | wc -l | tr -d ' ')"
Layer Count: 21

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