> I also like how they cover only copying the files you actually need, particularly with things like vendor or node_modules, you might be better off just doing a volume mount instead of copying it over to the entire image.
I'd highly suggest not to do that. If you do this, you directly throw away reproducibility, since you can't simply revert back to an older image if something stops working - you need to also check the node_modules directory. You also can't simply run old images or be sure that you have the same setup on your local machine as in production, since you also need to copy the state. Not to mention problems that might appear when your servers have differing versions of the folder or the headaches when needing to upgrade it together with your image.
Reducing your image size is important, but this way you'll loose a lot of what Docker actually offers. It might make sense in some specific cases, but you should be very aware of the drawbacks.
I'd highly suggest not to do that. If you do this, you directly throw away reproducibility, since you can't simply revert back to an older image if something stops working - you need to also check the node_modules directory. You also can't simply run old images or be sure that you have the same setup on your local machine as in production, since you also need to copy the state. Not to mention problems that might appear when your servers have differing versions of the folder or the headaches when needing to upgrade it together with your image.
Reducing your image size is important, but this way you'll loose a lot of what Docker actually offers. It might make sense in some specific cases, but you should be very aware of the drawbacks.