title: Docker: Are node alpine images at the end smaller then full node images?
body: <p>I'm running a cluster of nodeJS applications - which should be very small as they are run as microservices. Only a few of them need extra things like bcrypt or imagemagick - which makes some trouble from time to time for me.</p>
  
  <p>Right now I'm using <code>node:10.13-alpine</code> as a base image for all Dockerfiles to build my apps. For some of them I need to add dependencies via <code>apk</code> and so on. So these images become bigger. Is it the best approach to use a alpine image, which gets bigger by adding needed packages (e.g. python, gcc...)? Or should I use a full image?</p>
  
  <p>If I would use <code>node:10.13</code>, the base image would be a lot bigger, but if my understanding is correct my applications would only add a small layer as the same base image is used. So at the end it is better to use one big node image??</p>