Docker is designed to enclose environments inside an image / a container. What this allows, for example, is to have a Linux machine on a Macbook, or a machine with R 3.3 when your main computer has R 3.5. Also, this means that you can use older versions of a package for a specific task, while still keeping the package on your machine up-to-date.
This way, you can “solve” dependencies issues: if ever you are afraid dependencies will break your analysis when packages are updated, build a container that will always have the software versions you desire: be it Linux, R, or any package.
Click through for the details. H/T R-bloggers