tilDon't ingore .dockerignore!

One easy yet impactful way to optimize your Docker image is to add a .dockerignore file.

Just like .gitignore for Git, .dockerignore tells Docker which files and folders to skip when building your image. This keeps your image smaller, builds faster, and avoids copying unnecessary files like local logs, node_modules, temporary build artifacts, docs, and data files.

For example:

# .dockerignore
node_modules
dist
*.log
.DS_Store
.env

In one of my recent projects, adding a .dockerignore file reduced the image size from ~1.75GB to ~850MB — over 50% smaller! Faster build time and lower bandwidth usage - saving time and cost!

This is very easy and straightforward, but it’s very interesting to see how many useless files I have packed into the docker image every single time!