Five techniques to shrink bloated Docker images from gigabytes to megabytes

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Poorly optimised Docker images for simple Node.js apps can balloon past 1GB, primarily due to heavy base images, included dev dependencies, and unfiltered source files copied into the container. Switching from the full node:20 Debian base image to the Alpine variant alone can cut image size from roughly 1.1GB down to about 150MB. Using multi-stage builds further reduces this by keeping build tools and dev dependencies out of the final production image, pushing sizes closer to 100MB. A .dockerignore file prevents directories like .git, tests, and coverage reports from being copied in, which can save an additional 10–30% in size. For compiled languages like Go, using a distroless base image that contains only the application binary can reduce final image size to as little as 15MB, a roughly 90% reduction.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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