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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Build Automation
  4. Package Managers
  5. Composer vs Docker Swarm

Composer vs Docker Swarm

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Composer
Composer
Stacks1.2K
Followers559
Votes13
GitHub Stars29.2K
Forks4.7K
Docker Swarm
Docker Swarm
Stacks779
Followers990
Votes282

Composer vs Docker Swarm: What are the differences?

What is Composer? Dependency Manager for PHP. Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage (install/update) them for you.

What is Docker Swarm? Native clustering for Docker. Turn a pool of Docker hosts into a single, virtual host. Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Composer belongs to "Package Managers" category of the tech stack, while Docker Swarm can be primarily classified under "Container Tools".

"Must have dependency manager for PHP" is the top reason why over 3 developers like Composer, while over 44 developers mention "Docker friendly" as the leading cause for choosing Docker Swarm.

Composer and Docker Swarm are both open source tools. Composer with 20.5K GitHub stars and 5.56K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Docker Swarm with 5.64K GitHub stars and 1.12K GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Docker Swarm has a broader approval, being mentioned in 117 company stacks & 267 developers stacks; compared to Composer, which is listed in 138 company stacks and 246 developer stacks.

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Advice on Composer, Docker Swarm

Simon
Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 27, 2020

DecidedonGitHubGitHubGitHub PagesGitHub PagesMarkdownMarkdown

Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:

  • @{GitHub}|tool:27| (incl. @{GitHub Pages}|tool:683|/@{Markdown}|tool:1147| for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
  • Respectively @{Git}|tool:1046| as revision control system
  • @{SourceTree}|tool:1599| as @{Git}|tool:1046| GUI
  • @{Visual Studio Code}|tool:4202| as IDE
  • @{CircleCI}|tool:190| for continuous integration (automatize development process)
  • @{Prettier}|tool:7035| / @{TSLint}|tool:5561| / @{ESLint}|tool:3337| as code linter
  • @{SonarQube}|tool:2638| as quality gate
  • @{Docker}|tool:586| as container management (incl. @{Docker Compose}|tool:3136| for multi-container application management)
  • @{VirtualBox}|tool:774| for operating system simulation tests
  • @{Kubernetes}|tool:1885| as cluster management for docker containers
  • @{Heroku}|tool:133| for deploying in test environments
  • @{nginx}|tool:1052| as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
  • @{SSLMate}|tool:2752| (using @{OpenSSL}|tool:3091|) for certificate management
  • @{Amazon EC2}|tool:18| (incl. @{Amazon S3}|tool:25|) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
  • @{PostgreSQL}|tool:1028| as preferred database system
  • @{Redis}|tool:1031| as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)

The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:

  • Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
  • Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
  • Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
  • Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
  • Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
  • Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.
12.8M views12.8M
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Composer
Composer
Docker Swarm
Docker Swarm

It is a tool for dependency management in PHP. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage (install/update) them for you.

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Locally; Globally
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
29.2K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
4.7K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
1.2K
Stacks
779
Followers
559
Followers
990
Votes
13
Votes
282
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 7
    Must have dependency manager for PHP
  • 3
    Large number of libraries
  • 3
    Centralized autoload.php
Pros
  • 55
    Docker friendly
  • 46
    Easy to setup
  • 40
    Standard Docker API
  • 38
    Easy to use
  • 23
    Native
Cons
  • 9
    Low adoption
Integrations
PhpStorm
PhpStorm
Linux
Linux
JavaScript
JavaScript
PHP
PHP
PuPHPet
PuPHPet
MySQL
MySQL
ReactPHP
ReactPHP
macOS
macOS
Docker
Docker

What are some alternatives to Composer, Docker Swarm?

Meteor

Meteor

A Meteor application is a mix of JavaScript that runs inside a client web browser, JavaScript that runs on the Meteor server inside a Node.js container, and all the supporting HTML fragments, CSS rules, and static assets.

Bower

Bower

Bower is a package manager for the web. It offers a generic, unopinionated solution to the problem of front-end package management, while exposing the package dependency model via an API that can be consumed by a more opinionated build stack. There are no system wide dependencies, no dependencies are shared between different apps, and the dependency tree is flat.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.

Rancher

Rancher

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

Docker Compose

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

Elm

Elm

Writing HTML apps is super easy with elm-lang/html. Not only does it render extremely fast, it also quietly guides you towards well-architected code.

Tutum

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

Julia

Julia

Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing, with syntax that is familiar to users of other technical computing environments. It provides a sophisticated compiler, distributed parallel execution, numerical accuracy, and an extensive mathematical function library.

Portainer

Portainer

It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code.

Racket

Racket

It is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language based on the Scheme dialect of Lisp. It is designed to be a platform for programming language design and implementation. It is also used for scripting, computer science education, and research.

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