Category: dockerfile

I understand a dockerfile to be a comprehensive set of instructions to completely build an application’s production (and development for that matter) environment from scratch (or at least from a bare linux distribution).

I understand a buildpack to be something responsible for retrieving and installing collections of dependencies and (similarly to docker) merging these to provide the app’s running environment. I also see from here:

Buildpacks were first conceived by Heroku in 2011. Since then, they have been adopted by Cloud Foundry and other PaaS such as Google App Engine, Gitlab, Knative, Deis, Dokku, and Drie.

But I wonder what are the differences then? E.g.

• Are dockerfiles allowing more options than heroku buildpacks?
• Do both have the same capabilities in terms of permissions and users?
• Are they as versatile as eachother? (I know docker images can be run almost anywhere there is docker, is the same true of buildpacks?)
• What other differences are there?