Using Docker with nodejs with node-gyp dependencies

I'm planning to use Docker to deploy a node.js app. The app has several dependencies that require node-gyp. Node-gyp builds these modules (e.g. canvas, lwip, qrcode) against compiled libraries on the delivery platform, and in my experience these builds can be highly dependent on the o/s version and libraries installed, and they often break a simple npm install.

So is building my Dockerfile FROM node:version the correct approach? This seems to be the approach shown in every Docker/Node tutorial I've found so far. But if I build from a node image, what will happen when I deploy the container? How can I ensure the target host will have the libraries needed to compile the node-gyp modules?

The other way I'm looking at is to build the Dockerfile FROM ubuntu:version. But I think this would mean installing nodeJS into the Ubuntu image and the whole thing would be much larger.

Are there other ways of handling this?

via HieroB