Why are Docker container images so large?

Question

I made a simple image through Dockerfile from Fedora (initially 320 MB).

Added Nano (this tiny editor of 1MB size), and the size of the image has risen to 530 MB. I\

Answer 1

Yes the layer system is quite surprising. If you have a base image and you increment it by doing the following:

# Test
#
# VERSION       1

# use the centos base image provided by dotCloud
FROM centos7/wildfly
MAINTAINER JohnDo 

# Build it with: docker build -t "centos7/test" test/

# Change user into root
USER root

# Extract weblogic
RUN rm -rf /tmp/* \
    && rm -rf /wildfly/* 

The image has exactly the same size. That essentially means, you have to manage to put into your RUN steps a lot of extract, install and cleanup magic to make the images as small as the software installed.

This makes life much harder...

The dockerBuild is missing RUN steps without commit.