wharfie is a lightweight assistant for docker with a focus on removing large 'copy' layers from docker containers.
We found ourselves creating a directory structure as described in example directory structure
The with the majority of our Dockerfile being
FROM registry.office/base:latest
COPY provision /tmp/provision
RUN /tmp/provision/deploy.sh
Which resulted in an unnecessary large layer in the middle of our image that was quite literally a duplicate of the data used elsewhere.
wharfie lets us avoid the COPY step by being a simple httpd with built in compression tied to our build structure (think, nginx but with rigid layout and built in packaging)
With the resulting Dockerfile becoming
FROM registry.office/base:latest
RUN /bin/echo -e "GET /application1 HTTP/1.0\r\nhost:172.17.42.1\r\n\r\n" | /bin/nc 172.17.42.1 2864 | /usr/bin/tail -n+6 | /bin/bash
This could equally be curl http://127.17.42.1/application1 | /bin/bash but the ubuntu base image doesn't have curl installed by default.
Everything under /application1 will return a script that'll download and extract from /application1/bundle which is everything in /application1/provisioning compressed as a single tarball
##License
Copyright (c) 2014 Shannon Wynter, Ladbrokes Digital Australia Pty Ltd. Licensed under GPL2. See the LICENSE.md file for a copy of the license.