I’m planning to build an app that will mostly be run on desktop/laptop PCs or Macs. However, I still plan to use a web application architecture. I may use Electron, or use a similar approach. Think of it as a Hybrid app for the desktop. Electron takes care of an installer and Node.js - which is a good start, but I also need a database.
One of the great benefits of Docker is its encapsulation of all the dependencies for an app stack to be self-contained (all dependencies except Docker itself, of course). This is a great benefit I’d like to take advantage of. The fact that this architecture, with little change, could run in as a SaaS app is of course another reason I’m looking at this approach.
I know that I can instruct people to install Docker, or give them an easy to follow script that does it for them, or perhaps even drive the install from the native installer. I’ll be running 2-4 containers. I’ll have 1 or 2 NodeJS instances, a MongoDB instance and maybe an NGINX instance. The client will be a React based single-page app.
Any thoughts on this approach? Are there apps doing this that you know of? Is there an approach to make the use of Docker “silent” so that users (who are very non-technical) won’t see a bunch of stuff installed?
Any feedback/suggestions appreciate.