What is this all about?

Instead of having to install node, npm and a bunch of dependancies on your local machine for every project you have, you can run node in a sandboxed Docker container.

How do I install it?

There's not really an install process. You simply copy the files from the bin folder in this repo into your /usr/local/bin folder. Then you can run node or npm as normal, but it will spin up a new docker container.

git clone https://github.com/markwylde/node-but-in-docker.git
sudo cp ./bin/* /usr/local/bin

How do I use it?

You can just run node or npm from your favourite terminal on your local machine as normal. Your current working directory will be shared automatically at /app in the container.

There are a few caveats though:

Exposing ports is automatic

When running one of the scripts your network should be set to host, so any ports you use should automatically be exposed on your local host.

Globals will not work

You can install globals, and they will be saved in your host's ~/.node_modules directory. But they will not be linked when you run a new node instance. There is a solution that will come soon, via this issue.

Why would I want to do this?

Node and the npm ecosystem come with a lot of dependancies and code that may not be trusted. Instead of installing a bunch of code on your local computer, you can isolate it inside a docker container.