When deploying a production app using docker, should I still use volumes or should I use add in the dockerfile?

Question

I've been working on this little rails app with docker for a while and I'm finally ready to move it into production but I'm not sure what the best practice is for deploying a Docker app.

When developing my app I was using volumes because waiting for the docker to rebuild the image with each change to the app was ridiculous. In a production app, however, I'm not sure if there are any disadvantages.

Are there, if so what are they? Should I continue to use volumes or should I just make a new dockerfile with add?

Answer 1

The idea of an app container is that it is a "lightweight portable runtime which can be dropped anywhere". It isn't clear what you are using volumes for, if it is for certain libraries that will always be present on any host machine you choose to run this container on, then you can use volumes.

For app files, it is better to ADD the source files to the container and build.