DockerCon 2022 Recap: Docker Extensions, Linux, and 10x Engineers
Docker Desktop Extensions, DD4L, and key observations from the container community
The Ambassador Labs team and I had a lot of fun attending the latest virtual DockerCon this week. As many others noted on Twitter after the event, it very much looks like the Docker ecosystem is thriving. There were a bunch of product launches, such as Docker Extensions, Docker Desktop for Linux, and more. And equally important was the demonstration of an active and growing community; we got to hear so many great user stories from companies like Lucasfilms and Rapid7, and from Docker Captains, community luminaries, and many individual developers.
I thought this quote from Engin Diri perfectly captured the mood post-event:
However, I’m wondering if the Docker team would be channeling what LL Cool J famously said, “Don’t call it a comeback, [the Docker community] has been here for years…” :-)
Community, community, community
Docker CEO, Scott Johnston, didn’t quite go full-on Steve Balmer, but the focus in his opening keynote was clearly on the developer community. 12 million+ developers use Docker tech across 200 countries, and 13 billion downloads happen each month.
When you combine the commitment to the community with a focus on the developer experience and a healthy injection of recent cash, Docker is set to make waves in the cloud native development ecosystem for many years to come.
Extending the capabilities of Docker
Scott continued by assuring everyone that Docker will be investing heavily in the Docker Desktop experience that we all know and love. He also mentioned that there would be a big focus on creating more trusted content and adding more partner integrations via Docker Extensions (of which Ambassador Labs’ Telepresence was one of the launch partners for extensions).
I joined a lot of amazing people on the main stage and presented a lightning talk about our work on the Docker Desktop Extension for Telepresence.
Is 2022 the year of Linux on the (Docker) Desktop? :)
We all like to poke fun at Linux on the Desktop, but there’s no denying that it’s an important user platform for developers — indeed, I was a happy Linux user for many years until I got tempted with the shiny Mac hardware! Until recently, although Docker ran on Linux, you didn’t get quite the same experience as you did on Mac or Windows. But with the launch of Docker Desktop for Linux (DD4L), now you do!
Chris McLellan, Product Manager at Docker, provided a great overview of DD4L, and everything you would expect from the Linux version of the tool is included:
Docker’s focus: Trust, performance, experience
Justin Cormack, Docker's CTO, took to the virtual stage with some rather professional-looking A/V gear. Still, he didn’t let that impressive microphone distract from the core message that Docker has recently doubled down on trust, performance, and experience.
We’ll look into the software supply chain later in this article, but it was interesting to see the explicit call-outs to performance and the developer experience. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to see an explosion of Docker Extension, which could mean that Docker Desktop starts to become a very central part of a developer’s workflow.
The rise and fall of the 10x Developer
One of the standout moments of the event for me was the fireside chat between Kelsey Hightower and Scott. There were a lot of great stories shared between these old friends, focusing on everything from how new infrastructure abstractions like containers evolve and become widely accepted, to the importance of empathy within the software creation and delivery process:
However, the mic-drop moment for me was Kelsey’s comment about 10x developers, which he suggested, should really be focused on the need for engineers that can make 10 other developers more productive.
I was chatting with Mark Trang, Ambassador Labs’ CMO, after the event, and he made the interesting observation that the “someone” that can make 10 other developers more productive may well be a “platform engineer.” Definitely, something to think more about!
Talking about the tech: Breakout sessions
There were a lot of great break-out sessions to watch throughout the event. I’ll summarise a few of my favorite talks and some of the sessions I was involved in.
Telepresence for fast feedback with Kubernetes
The first talk I was involved in was the release of the new Docker Extension for Telepresence, the popular CNCF local-to-remote development tool for Kubernetes. The Ambassador Labs engineering team was super excited to get asked to create a Docker Extension as part of the launch, and it was a great experience collaborating with the Docker team.
Richard Li, Ambassador Labs’ CEO and co-founder, took to the Excel stage and walked everyone through “Integrating Telepresence with Docker Desktop Extensions”. He highlighted several common problems developers experience when adopting Kubernetes, most notably the slow development feedback loop of build-push-verify, which only gets worse as your system gets bigger. The Docker Desktop Extension for Telepresence can help by proxying your local machine into a remote cluster’s network. Here my teammate, Edidiong Asikpo, captured this perfectly:
In addition to providing an overview of how the Docker Extension for Telepresence works, Richard was joined by Nick Powell, the lead engineer for the extension. Nick walked everyone through the process of using the new Docker Extension SDK and highlighted a few of the technical challenges encountered along the way. He also provided a deep dive into some of the tradeoffs and benefits of the solution ultimately implemented:
If you want to learn more about the Docker Extension for Telepresence and take it for a spin, check out the guide “Testing with Telepresence and Docker”
Secure all the things: image scanning & docker sbom
There was a lot of focus on all things security at DockerCon. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone keeping an eye on industry trends, as collectively, we are beginning to realize the importance of a secure software supply chain. In addition to great demos of the new Docker Extensions for the Aqua Trivy and Snyk image scanners, Justin Cormack and Dan Luhring, who leads OSS at Anchore, walked through the new docker sbom command.
This looks to be a super quick and effective way of generating a Software Bill of Materials, i.e., a list of components and dependencies within your container images.
Shout out to fellow Java Champion Melissa McKay, Developer Advocate at JFrog, for a great demo of the new JFrog Docker Extension:
Remote IDEs, local dev, or somewhere in between?
I’ve recently become fascinated by the trend toward developing code within containers. And naturally, once you’ve containerized your development environment, you can run it anywhere — locally, on the cloud, or as a hybrid experience.
I’ve enjoyed experimenting with the Gitpod remote IDE, and have been keeping a close eye on work by Microsoft (GitHub) on devcontainers (and the VS code support). I’ve also been playing around with Docker Development Environment Preview, which currently only supports a local set up but is nonetheless very interesting.
Kris Rivera, Principal Software Developer at Rapid7, riffed on these topics and presented a great demo of how his team had set up their local development environments using Docker Compose.
Build your own Docker Extensions
For me, the star of the DockerCon show was clearly the Docker Extensions announcement, and many folks in the event chat were keen to learn how they can get involved. Felipe Cruz and Guillaume Tardif from Docker presented a great session about the Docker Extension SDK.
With all of this great information available, there really isn’t any excuse not to start coding your own extension!
Wrapping up
Kudos to all of the organizers, presenters, and attendees at DockerCon — the event was fantastic. As much as I’m keen to see the event return to the physical world — and I thoroughly enjoyed taking to the stage back in Barcelona in 2017 — we couldn’t have asked for much more from a virtual conference. The community buzz was palpable, and the event live stream chat was friendly and inquisitive. The tech demos were also on point, with both the Docker folks and the community providing great deep dives into the new tech like the Docker Extensions, Docker Desktop for Linux, and the new security features.
