Use boot2docker instead of Ubuntu

[julien-duponchelle]

Boot2docker is lighter than ubuntu:
https://github.com/steeve/boot2docker

[julien-duponchelle]

PS: I have worked with steeve the author of boot2docker in a previous company, it's a small world :)

[bfirsh]

Small world indeed.

@josephschorr is interested in working on this too.

[bfirsh]

At the moment getting docker-osx to build on Vagrant is not straight forward:

boot2docker/boot2docker#29

It would be brilliant to do this without Vagrant, but I haven't investigated the complexity of that.

[shykes]

+1 on using boot2docker :)

[fxposter]

https://github.com/mitchellh/boot2docker-vagrant-box now it IS more than straightforward!

[mmerickel]

My 2cents on this whole thing is that the docker-osx api is basically perfect for most usages. The only things it could change underneath are dropping vagrant and using VBoxManage directly to spin up a boot2docker vm instead of building a new one. When I've looked at boot2docker's init scripts they just aren't as nice for bootstrapping a system as the docker-osx setup. For example, they still use port forwarding instead of just mapping everything to localdocker and mapping your home directory into the VM for seamless usage from the outside in things like volume mounting is a very manual and annoying process.

[michaelneale]

Agree - I liked docker-osx and boot2docker image seems perfect. The localdocker convention for the guest VM I think is a great one to encourage - over port forwarding (keep port forwading for only docker and ssh ports).

I have seen people tripped up, many times, when trying to run an image (often based on the Vagrantfile in the docker repo) as one of the 40K port ranges it wants to forward is in use by Skype or other desktop tools.

This is good stuff!

[drnic]

As long as we keep synced folders. The https://github.com/mitchellh/boot2docker-vagrant-box project seemed to lose synced folders support when using boot2docker ISO due to lack of guest additions.

I think the request in this ticket is equivalent to https://github.com/fnichol/dvm project?

[michaelneale]

yes likely so.

Running ubuntu isn't too bad for when you do want to ssh in and run thing in linux (when debugging interaction with the the docker client - you really want to do that). I wonder if the memory footprint is that different - I didn't notice boot2docker was really much better for me in either disk/download or memory (but I didn't look close).
Might be more interesting to see if vagrant in the middle can be done away with (go direct to vbox cli).