[Newbie] Why do google's example services deploy Go applications on alpine instead of scratch docker image?

<p>Good example: <a href="https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/skaffold/blob/master/examples/getting-started/Dockerfile" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/skaffold/blob/master/examples/getting-started/Dockerfile</a></p> <p>I know that Golang application when deployed on docker could utilize scratch image to reduce container size. Why is there a need for alpine in this case?</p> <hr/>**评论：**<br/><br/>darxkies: <pre><p>The Alpine overhead is small. Less than 5MB? With Alpine you can start a shell in the container for diagnoses. And it also includes the files to verify SSL certificates for HTTPS and so on.</p></pre>qwert_dev: <pre><p>they do this so the go tools and unix utilities are present to aid in debugging</p></pre>