New release of open-source Docker software container system eliminates need for AnotherUnion Filesystem to transport apps from one flavor of Linux to a different.

Docker is this kind of young open-source code project that it still hasn’t reached its 1.0 release. Nevertheless, with the 0.7 release issued this week, it gained broader appeal.

Docker is a seven-month-old software container system that will be considered a software-such as the common-or-garden shipping container used on trucks and ships. Because Docker is an identical in numerous environments, it’s possible to position any application into it and move it around to different datacenter and cloud environments. Because it has got an ordinary way of operating, Docker can be utilized to navigate different hypervisors and operating environments into which it has been shipped.

That’s making it well liked by open-source developers who typically use Linux. But until this week, only two Linuxes came able to recognize and work with Docker, those who were pre-equipped with the AnotherUnion Filesystem. AUFS knows the way to act as a translator between differing file systems, but only Debian and Ubuntu distributions came pre-equipped with it.

With the discharge of Docker 0.7, it not needs the distribution to contain AUFS earlier. So Docker now works with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora in addition to Ubuntu and Debian. It also work with SUSE Linux; Gentoo Linux, often used as an operating system optimized to work with a specific application; and Arch Linux, utilized by some developers. It also works with the Red Hat knockoff, Centos.

[Need to learn more about how Docker’s way to containers works? See Docker Finds Open Source Success.]

Before this latest release, developers who desired to use Docker with a Linux that did not have AUFS needed to install it themselves, making changes to the Linux kernel. Not everybody opted to try this, said Solomon Hykes, CTO and founding father of Docker, the corporate that sponsors the Docker open-source project. The San Francisco company formerly glided by the name DotCloud.

This release of Docker avoids the AUFS requirement by leveraging device mapper, a feature of the Linux kernel that lets it map files from one files system or device to these of an extra device. “We now have been partnering closely with Red Hat,” said Hykes. “Red Hat was contributing significant engineering effort to get Docker to work with [community supported] Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”

Developers who previously worked on projects under a unique Linux, often at  home, are actually ready to bring their software to work and run it under Red Hat Linux, Hykes noted. Because of Docker, a developer can work under the Apple Mac’s iOS, be tested under Fedora, undergo quality assurance under SUSE, and enter production under Red Hat Enterprise Linux. “The pipeline can start right there at the developer’s machine,” he noted.

In the longer term, Hykes claimed, Docker will enable complex applications to be developed by different teams under different versions of Linux, then be assembled as component sets running in various Docker containers. “It’s going to simplify the difficulty by breaking down the barriers between operating environments,” he said.

Applications can be moved into bare metal, virtualized, or cloud environments within the Docker container and run there. “much more people may be free to exploit Docker at home and at work” with the 0.7 release, Hykes noted.

Battle lines are forming behind hardware-centric and virtual approaches to software-defined networking. We size up strengths and weaknesses. Also within the SDN Skirmish issue of InformationWeek: Anonymity has a task in business communities. (Free registration required.)

More Insights