> I think the "just as easily" is highly debatable.
Heads up, you're talking about a different thing. You want to run these things
as normal operations, but gunnihinn was talking about deploying an application
to check if it is of any value. Chroot is just enough to make a mess as the
application's developer instructed in INSTALL.txt without the need to worry
about cleaning up afterwards.
And by the way, you seem to be confusing containers and Docker.
I disagree. Just google "doesn't work in chroot" and you'll be reminded of a litany of issues that come up when trying to build/run things in a chroot, and a container containing a linux distro makes a tidy little sandbox which generally avoids those issues. It's somewhere on a spectrum between a chroot and a VM, which I think a lot of people find value in.
And I'm not confusing containers and Docker, I'm just speaking a bit imprecisely. In my experience, conversations about "containers" are rarely about raw containers, but rather some specific containerization scheme and tools (e.g. docker). I suspect everyone in this entire subthread means "docker containers" when they says "containers."
> Just google "doesn't work in chroot" and you'll be reminded of a litany of issues that come up when trying to build/run things in a chroot
Yeah, some newbie forgot to mount-bind a necessary directory like /proc or
/dev, didn't provide sensible /etc/resolv.conf, or messed up host's and
chroot's paths, either in request or in configuration. Nothing that would
render chroot unviable. Is this what you meant?
Good question. Why anyone presented with fancy and fashionable third party
software would use a mechanism that has been present for decades, ships with
the operating system, works reliably and predictably, doesn't change
substantially every quarter, doesn't do any magical things to network
configuration, and is easy to inspect, debug, and adjust for an outsider? Why
indeed?
Heads up, you're talking about a different thing. You want to run these things as normal operations, but gunnihinn was talking about deploying an application to check if it is of any value. Chroot is just enough to make a mess as the application's developer instructed in INSTALL.txt without the need to worry about cleaning up afterwards.
And by the way, you seem to be confusing containers and Docker.