Containers in Software Development: A Systematic Mapping Study

Over the past decade, continuous software development has become a common place in the field of software engineering. Containers like Docker are a lightweight solution that developers can use to deploy and manage applications. Containers are used to build both component-based architectures and microservice architectures. Still, practitioners often view containers only as way to lower resource requirements compared to virtual machines. In this paper, we conducted a systematic mapping study to find information on what is known of how containers are used in software development. 56 primary studies were selected into this paper and they were categorized and mapped to identify the gaps in the current research. Based on the results containers are most often discussed in the context of cloud computing, performance and DevOps. We find that what is currently missing is more deeply focused research.