Stop Writing Dockerfiles! Here’s What You Should Do Instead

The ways that you should never write your dockerfiles

The Hard Truth: You’re Doing Dockerfiles Wrong!

I remember the first time I confidently wrote a Dockerfile. I felt like a DevOps genius 👑. But I didn’t realise this soon, but over time managing those files turned into a nightmare — security concerns, unexpected build issues, and bloated images.

If you’ve been manually crafting Dockerfiles, let me break it to you:

There’s a better way!

And if you keep doing it the old way, you’re just making life harder for yourself.

Let’s talk about why traditional Dockerfiles are flawed and how to fix your workflow ASAP.

Why You Should Stop Writing Dockerfiles

  1. Security Risks — Hand-written Dockerfiles most often introduce vulnerabilities. Outdated base images, unnecessary layers, and missing security best practices can expose your application to risks.

2. Inconsistent Builds — Your local build might work fine, but when deployed? Boom. Different environments, caching issues, and version mismatches wreak havoc.

3. Slow & Bloated Images — Manually written Dockerfiles often include unnecessary dependencies, leading to huge image sizes that slow down deployments.

4. Hard to Maintain — As your project scales, updating Dockerfiles becomes tedious. Minor tweaks can break everything if not handled carefully.

The Better Alternative: Use Pre-Built Base Images & Build Tools

1. Multi-Stage Builds

If you’re still writing single-stage Dockerfiles, you’re doing it wrong. Multi-stage builds let you create lean, production-ready images without any unnecessary bloating.

Example:

# Build stage
FROM node:18 AS builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY . .
RUN npm install && npm run build
# Production stage
FROM node:18-alpine
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=builder /app/dist ./dist
CMD ["node", "dist/server.js"]

Result: Small, efficient, and optimized images.

2. Ditch Hand-Written Dockerfiles — Use Buildpacks

Cloud Native Buildpacks automate image creation, eliminating the need to manually write Dockerfiles.

Why Buildpacks?

  • No need to worry about base images.
  • Automatically applies security patches.
  • Works across different cloud providers.

Run this command instead of writing a Dockerfile and get yourself a ready to go Dockerfile:

pack build myapp --builder gcr.io/paketo-buildpacks/builder:base

That’s it! No Dockerfile is needed.

3. Use Docker Slim for Optimized Images

Already have Dockerfiles?

No worries — use DockerSlim to minimize image sizes without rewriting anything.

Command:

dockerslim build --target myapp

WOW! You just got yourself a 30–90% smaller images with security hardening.

The Future of Containerization:

Automation > Manual Effort

The days of manually writing Dockerfiles are numbered.

If you want:

  • Faster deployments
  • More secure images
  • Less maintenance headache

Start using Multi-Stage Builds, Buildpacks, and DockerSlim today.

What’s Your Experience?

Have you tried these approaches? Still, relying on traditional Dockerfiles? Drop a comment and let’s discuss! 🚀