Docker

Some notes related to how we build a docker image for alu server.

A spring boot server has built in support for creating a docker image via the spring-boot:build-image goal. This goal is part of the spring-boot-maven-plugin. This is how we initially built the docker image for alu server. Unfortunately the image created by this goal is not suitable anymore. Once we started using Apache POI to generate excel files the application will error out complaining about missing fonts.

The solution is to create a Dockerfile and build the image using that file, making sure to include the necessary fonts. One additional benefit of using a Dockerfile is that image we end up with is much smaller than the one created by the spring-boot:build-image goal.