Alpine Linux

Specifications

• distribution built around musl libc (vs glibc on Debian) and BusyBox (simplified implementation of Unix commands, alternative to Gnu utils)
• services are manages with OpenRC (simple and script based) (vs systemd on Debian)
• 5MB in size (vs 100 MB for Debian)
• has a package repository
• first version in 2006
• latest stable 3.21 as of Sep 2025

Good practices for building images on top of Alpine

• Utilities such as Vim and Sudo can be installed for debugging purposes
• apk add --no-cache avoids running apk update and remove /var/cache/apk/* : helps keeping containers small

Note

Alpine does not include by default a number of packages, such as bash, nano, sed, sudo, curl, ...

Note

As it is built around musl libc, some softwares built for glibc (Oracle JDK or some Python package such as pandas) will require workarounds, sunch as installing compatibility layer (ex gcompat)

Tip

Multistage builds (building on Debian, running on Alpine) can be a compromise

Sources

• Mistral
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49118579/alpine-dockerfile-advantages-of-no-cache-vs-rm-var-cache-apk
• https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox
• https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_Linux