Three techniques to shrink a Docker image
WHAT IT TESTS: practical image-size reduction with trade-offs. OUTLINE: multi-stage builds to drop build tooling, smaller base images like slim or distroless, and fewer or cleaner layers plus dockerignore.
WHAT IT TESTS: whether you can reduce image size deliberately and articulate the costs. ANSWER OUTLINE: use multi-stage builds so compilers and dev dependencies stay out of the final image; choose a leaner base such as slim, alpine, or distroless, noting alpine's musl libc quirks and distroless's lack of a shell for debugging; and minimize layers, clean package caches in the same RUN, and add a dockerignore. Each helps but trades away build complexity or debuggability. RED FLAG: listing techniques with no trade-off discussion.
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- #docker
- #image-size
- #multi-stage
- #optimization
- #best-practices
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