'Docker Up and Running' - Book Review

Docker Up and Running is a 2015 book published by O'Reilly, by authors Karl Matthias & Sean P. Kane. It covers version 1.10 of Docker - which is important, because Docker is developing very quickly indeed.

The book is an excellent resource, covering getting started through to orchestration, each in considerable detail ... with one gaping hole. At one point they say "this is what a Dockerfile looks like." And that's the end of the discussion of creating Docker images. I realize there's more to dealing with Docker than creating images, but without the images, Docker does nothing. And creating images is NOT simple: it can be a long and sometimes rocky iterative process that deserves a chapter. This is one of O'Reilly's thinnest books at 210 pages, and a 15 page chapter on building images and working with Dockerfiles would have been greatly appreciated.

I'm not usually one for giving "stars," but in this case it will demonstrate how badly broken the book is. If it had had a chapter on Dockerfiles and making Docker images, I would have given this five stars out of five - it's that well organized and written. But this takes it down to three stars.