Docker for Rails Developers

Why Use Docker?

To build a Rails app, we typically develop on our local machine. Rather than each team member manually maintaining their own local development environments, we can use Docker to provide a common, standardized environment. This saves on repeated effort and helps avoid many forms of the “works on my machine” issues that can waste hours.

Other benefits of using Docker for your development environment include:

• A holistic view of your app. Rails apps typically need a database and other external dependencies like Redis and Elasticsearch. With Docker, these dependencies are no longer an afterthought or “add-on” like in Heroku; they are described and managed as fundamental parts of your app.

• Single-command app installation and setup. ...