I felt this a year or two back, but today I've had as good of an experience on Docker w/ arm64 as I do w/ x86_64. I use arm64 Docker a lot since I work on a M1 MacBook.
I usually stick to the common base images, e.g. ubuntu, alpine, nodejs, golang, etc. and install based off of that. Also, I rarely write Dockerfiles these days and instead use Earthly [0], which is a tool that really shines as a CI/make alternative, but it incidentally also has a nicer syntax which makes it easier to write multi-platform Docker images.
What images or other problems have you ran into on arm64?
For example gitlab. The latest arm image, as far as I could tell, isn't the same as the most recent x86. And, iirc, it was from some other person, not gitlab. It's often hard to tell what you are getting when you run an image, because docker pull can pull an image that isn't a multi platform build. I've had issues where the SSL certificates don't work, and I'm assuming it is because the stack could listen on 443, but the full ssl when running on arm didn't work. I'm not sure if that was because it is emulating using Rosetta or whether the software inside the container built correctly but isn't actually running on the arm platform correctly or what. It just feels like the wild west with arm images right now. I'm sure it will get better but it is still a minority platform and that comes with those issues.
And, this might just be exposing my ignorance. Until recently I hadn't needed to use arm but now with macos it's gotten more interesting and more complicated.
Yes, my memory is a bit foggy, but it was difficult to get any of the images to work, so I started playing with other contributors. But, you are right.
> The latest arm image, as far as I could tell, isn't the same as the most recent x86. And, iirc, it was from some other person, not gitlab.
Ah, that's fair. If you're running software packaged by others, that might be less well-covered because you'll have to wait until all of the vendors you care about add in that supprort.
If you're developing software in arm64 Docker, I think that case is pretty good today.
I usually stick to the common base images, e.g. ubuntu, alpine, nodejs, golang, etc. and install based off of that. Also, I rarely write Dockerfiles these days and instead use Earthly [0], which is a tool that really shines as a CI/make alternative, but it incidentally also has a nicer syntax which makes it easier to write multi-platform Docker images.
What images or other problems have you ran into on arm64?
[0]: https://earthly.dev/