Why containerize a Gatsby blog?
A Gatsby site is fast and portable, but the workflow around it can drift between machines. Containerizing the app makes the build reproducible, keeps dependencies consistent, and gives you a production image that behaves like your real deployment environment.
The core idea
We want one Docker image for development and one for production:
- Dev image runs
gatsby developfor hot reload - Prod image runs
gatsby buildand serves static assets with nginx
This makes CI simple: build the production image, run tests, and deploy only when necessary.
What CI should decide
Not every change needs a full build or test run. A small metadata script can scan changed files and decide what to do:
- Content changes (
content/,.md) -> build only - UI or config changes (
src/,gatsby-*.js,package.json) -> build + test - Infra changes (
k8s/,netlify/) -> deploy pipeline only
This lets your pipeline skip work without skipping safety.
Example CI flow
- Analyze changes and output impact metadata
- Build the production image when needed
- Run tests for UI or config changes
- Deploy only when the image and tests pass
Why this is DevOps-friendly
You get the best of both worlds:
- Developers iterate fast with a consistent dev container
- CI builds match production behavior
- Kubernetes deploys a predictable, static image
Takeaway
Containerization turns Gatsby into a clean, repeatable unit. With a small impact-analysis step, CI becomes smarter and faster without sacrificing reliability.
