Managing delivery of code and dependent data using application containers

A computing device comprising:

• one or more storage components that store an application container;
• and
• one or more processors that execute a container runtime of the application container to, responsive to receiving a request to execute an application:
• determine one or more dependencies of the application, wherein the one or more dependencies include one or more required dependencies and one or more optional dependencies;
• initiate retrieval of the one or more required dependencies;
• initiate retrieval of the one or more optional dependencies;
• and
• responsive to receiving all of the one or more required dependencies and while at least one of optional dependencies has not yet been received by the container runtime, execute the application.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium encoded with instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing device, cause the one or more processors to, responsive to receiving a request to execute an application:

• determine, using an application container, one or more dependencies of the application, wherein the one or more dependencies include one or more required dependencies and one or more optional dependencies, wherein the application container includes a set of common functionality for a plurality of different applications;
• initiate, using an application container, retrieval of the one or more required dependencies;
• initiate, using an application container, retrieval of the one or more optional dependencies;
• and
• responsive to receiving all of the one or more required dependencies and while at least one of optional dependencies has not yet been received by the application container, execute the application.