Manually creating custom images as shown in the previous section of this chapter is very helpful when doing exploration, creating prototypes, or making feasibility studies. But it has a serious drawback: it is a manual process and thus is not repeatable or scalable. It is also as error-prone as any task executed manually by humans. There must be a better way.
This is where the so-called Dockerfile comes into play. The Dockerfile is a text file that is usually literally called Dockerfile. It contains instructions on how to build a custom container image. It is a declarative way of building images.
Declarative versus imperative: In computer science, in general and with Docker specifically, one often uses a declarative way ...
