Backend container fails to build on Apple Silicon Mac

Describe the bug:

docker-compose build currently fails on Apple Silicon Macs. I haven’t been able to fully figure out why it breaks from the error logs, but a bit of research suggests that there are known compatibility issues when using Prisma in certain Docker images on Apple Silicon Macs.

I was able to get the project running by using the following server.Dockerfile (using the node:16 image and installing netcat)

FROM node:16

WORKDIR /usr/chapter/

# Bundle app source
COPY ./server ./server
COPY package*.json ./

# Install app dependencies
RUN apt-get update && apt-get -y dist-upgrade && apt install -y netcat 
RUN npm ci -w=server --ignore-scripts

EXPOSE 5000

WORKDIR /usr/chapter/server

CMD [ "npm","run","dev" ]

Just to be clear I’m not suggesting that this Dockerfile should be used, as it creates an unnecessarily large image - it’s just the first thing that I got to work. But I do think that making the project work out of the box on all common platforms should be a goal.

Tell us about your browser and operating system:

M1 MacBook Air, MacOS 12.2.1

[c-ehrlich]

@allella it should not make a difference for CPUs that are already amd64 (Intel CPUs are also amd64) - what the platform command actually does is tell Docker to download the image for the specified platform/architecture, so amd64 would use this image anyway. Emulation is how Apple Silicon (and Windows on ARM) deals with non-native images.

I worked on a different part of Chapter last night. Anecdotally the server feels indistinguishable from native, which makes sense as it doesn’t need to handle a lot of requests during dev/testing.

By the way Windows on ARM also has x64 emulation. Some of the Snapdragon SoCs are a bit slower than the M1, but they should still be able to emulate fine.

The only devices I’m not sure about is ARM-based Chromebooks or other ARM-based Linux machines. However the current containers already wouldn’t build on those so at least fixing it on Apple Silicon and Windows on ARM without impacting other platforms feels like a good improvement for the time being.

[allella]

@c-ehrlich is the emulation only going to slow down the Mac Silicon since most other processors will already be amd64? Or, does adding that emulation line also cause a typical x64 CPU to operate in a different mode?

If it’s only slowing down the new Macs, then it would seem that’s better than making everyone else slow by downloading 10x the images.