Call me lazy; I don't like doing the same thing over and over when it comes to writing code; same for Dockerfiles as well. I have been following various formula that I gathered from various sources; primarily from this post of Dave Beckett's . After a while, I thought I will put them together into a script that can easily be consumed from my Dockerfiles. Here is the outcome; have a look at my github repo codemedic/debian-docker-build-tools . The README has an example that will help you how to use it. The scheme used here has two main intentions; use backend agnostic primitives (function names) to perform package related tasks, and provide backend specific auto-cleanup to remove package manager artefacts. This paves way to the possibility of using a different (non-debian, say alpine or centos) base image with a different version of these scripts, in a generic and more readable fashion; and it will tidy up after itself, leading to smaller images.
Having agreed with my manager, who was kind enough to allow me to work from home while away in India (my home country), I was quite eggsited about the Easter break. As usual, I was visiting my family, and was hopeful that it will workout OK for me, but it turns out that the country seem to develop backwards! Basically the ISP in my town here is quite appalling! A strong breeze and the connection is gone! Summer rains which is usually associated with thunders, makes it worse! Power-cuts or load shedding as they call it, is cherry on the cake! So I am left with a home setup that has a few KVA backup power but no reliable Internet connection! So I am having to work offline mostly and then sync occasionally! Some people might think, why not use a remote filesystem like SSHFS (fuse mount over SSH); I could, if the connection was stable, it is a no go area on unreliable link, as the mount hangs when link goes away! Surely, what is said in the title is norm