If the problem is that the version of pandoc in CentOS 6 is too old, then why not try to use a CentOS 7 container as a base?
In the end aren't containers about choosing whichever OS image is better suited for a task?
Environment restrictions matter here. If you're running on Citrix Xen Server latest (v6.2 like we do and are heavily committed as a business to Xen Server) then you're stuck at CentOS 6.4 (or Ubuntu 12.04 and Debian 7.0).
Trying to run anything newer in any sort of mission critical role, and it screws up, will result in being told it's unsupported.
I'm keen on being able to support Docker but CentOS 6.5 is the earliest version that has out of the box support and CentOS 6.5 won't be supported by Citrix until the next XenServer release.
But, for us as a smallish hoster targeting businesses with managed services we value long term support and stability even if it means having to wait a bit for the fun stuff to arrive.
Isn't the Docker container all userspace with no kernel components?
What is the difference between running a Docker container for pandoc with CentOS 7, or running a Docker container with CentOS 6.4 and manually built pandoc?
Isn't pandoc equally unsupported in both cases? In fact as the OP mentions the pandoc in CentOS 6 was broken, so if it supported why wasn't a solution provided via the support channels?
> Isn't the Docker container all userspace with no kernel components?
Yes but you still need a minimum kernel version to run Docker (2.6.32-431 or higher according to [0]).
Earlier this year when we were exploring Docker, CentOS 6.4's latest kernel version didn't meet that requirement so Docker was a no-go. CentOS 6.5 was the min version with a supported kernel but our Citrix XenServer environment (6.2SP100) had no official vendor support for >=6.5. We don't run anything on our Citrix environments unless it's properly supported by them.
Now because of your comment and doing my fact checking, I just found out that CentOS 6.4's kernel is now at version 2.6.32-504 which is damn fine news for us. That said we'd still be stuck with CentOS 6.4 containers because CentOS 7 containers would still be unsupported by Citrix.
