Since a layer is reserved for "customization", the image can not
contains less than 2 layers.
The user gets the following message at evaluation:
nix-instantiate nixos/tests/docker-tools.nix
trace: the maxLayers argument of dockerTools.buildLayeredImage function must be greather than 1 (current value: 1)
Building a docker image with darwin binaries just yields a confusing
error when ran:
standard_init_linux.go:211: exec user process caused "exec format error"
This change prevents people from building such images in the first place
when tar'ing store paths into layered archives when building layered
images, don't use the absolute nix store path so that tar won't complain
if something new is added to the nix store
when building the final docker image, ignore any file changes tar
detects in the layers. they are all immutable and the only thing that
might change is the number of hard links due to store optimization
Before, every docker image had three extra layers:
1. A `closure` layer which is an internal implementation detail of
calculating the closure of the container
2. a `name-config.json` layer which is the images' run-time
configuration, and has no business being *in* the image as a layer.
3. a "bulk-layers" layer which is again and implementation detail
around collecting the image's closure.
None of these layers need to be in the final product.
dockerTools.buildImageWithNixDb: export USER
Changes to Nix user detection (./src/nix-channel/nix-channel.cc#L-166)
cause this function to error. Exporting USER fixes this.
The architecture of an image should default to the architecture for
which that image is being composed or pulled. buildPackages.go.GOARCH is
an easy way to compute that architecture with the correct terminology.
The layer order was not correct when a parent image was used: parent
image layers were above the new created layer.
This commits simplifies the code related to layer ordering. In
particular, layers in `layer-list` are ordered from bottom-most to
top-most. This is also the order of layers in the `rootfs.diff_ids`
attribute of the image configuration.
Whenever we create scripts that are installed to $out, we must use runtimeShell
in order to get the shell that can be executed on the machine we create the
package for. This is relevant for cross-compiling. The only use case for
stdenv.shell are scripts that are executed as part of the build system.
Usages in checkPhase are borderline however to decrease the likelyhood
of people copying the wrong examples, I decided to use runtimeShell as well.
bcf54ce5bb introduced a treewide change to
use ${stdenv.shell} where-ever possible. However, this broke a script
used by dockerTools, store-path-to-layer.sh, as it did not preserve the
+x mode bit. This meant the file got put into the store as mode 0444,
resulting in a build-time error later on that looked like:
xargs: /nix/store/jixivxhh3c8sncp9xlkc4ls3y5f2mmxh-store-path-to-layer.sh: Permission denied
However, in a twist of fate, bcf54ce5bb
not only introduced this regression but, in this particular instance,
didn't even fix the original bug: the store-path-to-layer.sh script
*still* uses /bin/sh as its shebang line, rather than an absolute path
to stdenv. (Fixing this can be done in a separate commit.)
Signed-off-by: Austin Seipp <aseipp@pobox.com>
This patch preserves the ordering of layers of a parent image when the
new image is packed.
It is currently not the case: layers are stacked in the reverse order.
Fixes#55290
Docker images used to be, essentially, a linked list of layers. Each
layer would have a tarball and a json document pointing to its parent,
and the image pointed to the top layer:
imageA ----> layerA
|
v
layerB
|
v
layerC
The current image spec changed this format to where the Image defined
the order and set of layers:
imageA ---> layerA
|--> layerB
`--> layerC
For backwards compatibility, docker produces images which follow both
specs: layers point to parents, and images also point to the entire
list:
imageA ---> layerA
| |
| v
|--> layerB
| |
| v
`--> layerC
This is nice for tooling which supported the older version and never
updated to support the newer format.
Our `buildImage` code only supported the old version, so in order for
`buildImage` to properly generate an image based on another image
with `fromImage`, the parent image's layers must fully support the old
mechanism.
This is not a problem in general, but is a problem with
`buildLayeredImage`.
`buildLayeredImage` creates images with newer image spec, because
individual store paths don't have a guaranteed parent layer. Including
a specific parent ID in the layer's json makes the output less likely
to cache hit when published or pulled.
This means until now, `buildLayeredImage` could not be the input to
`buildImage`.
The changes in this PR change `buildImage` to only use the layer's
manifest when locating parent IDs. This does break buildImage on
extremely old Docker images, though I do wonder how many of these
exist.
This work has been sponsored by Target.
Since Nix 2 is now the stable Nix version, we can use closureInfo
which simplifies the Nix database initialisation (size and hash are
included in the "dump").
Create a many-layered Docker Image.
Implements much less than buildImage:
- Doesn't support specific uids/gids
- Doesn't support runninng commands after building
- Doesn't require qemu
- Doesn't create mutable copies of the files in the path
- Doesn't support parent images
If you want those feature, I recommend using buildLayeredImage as an
input to buildImage.
Notably, it does support:
- Caching low level, common paths based on a graph traversial
algorithm, see referencesByPopularity in
0a80233487993256e811f566b1c80a40394c03d6
- Configurable number of layers. If you're not using AUFS or not
extending the image, you can specify a larger number of layers at
build time:
pkgs.dockerTools.buildLayeredImage {
name = "hello";
maxLayers = 128;
config.Cmd = [ "${pkgs.gitFull}/bin/git" ];
};
- Parallelized creation of the layers, improving build speed.
- The contents of the image includes the closure of the configuration,
so you don't have to specify paths in contents and config.
With buildImage, paths referred to by the config were not included
automatically in the image. Thus, if you wanted to call Git, you
had to specify it twice:
pkgs.dockerTools.buildImage {
name = "hello";
contents = [ pkgs.gitFull ];
config.Cmd = [ "${pkgs.gitFull}/bin/git" ];
};
buildLayeredImage on the other hand includes the runtime closure of
the config when calculating the contents of the image:
pkgs.dockerTools.buildImage {
name = "hello";
config.Cmd = [ "${pkgs.gitFull}/bin/git" ];
};
Minor Problems
- If any of the store paths change, every layer will be rebuilt in
the nix-build. However, beacuse the layers are bit-for-bit
reproducable, when these images are loaded in to Docker they will
match existing layers and not be imported or uploaded twice.
Common Questions
- Aren't Docker layers ordered?
No. People who have used a Dockerfile before assume Docker's
Layers are inherently ordered. However, this is not true -- Docker
layers are content-addressable and are not explicitly layered until
they are composed in to an Image.
- What happens if I have more than maxLayers of store paths?
The first (maxLayers-2) most "popular" paths will have their own
individual layers, then layer #(maxLayers-1) will contain all the
remaining "unpopular" paths, and finally layer #(maxLayers) will
contain the Image configuration.
Because dates are an impurity, by default buildImage will use a static
date of one second past the UNIX Epoch. This can be a bit frustrating
when listing docker images in the CLI:
$ docker image list
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
hello latest 08c791c7846e 48 years ago 25.2MB
If you want to trade the purity for a better user experience, you can
set created to now.
pkgs.dockerTools.buildImage {
name = "hello";
tag = "latest";
created = "now";
contents = pkgs.hello;
config.Cmd = [ "/bin/hello" ];
}
and now the Docker CLI will display a reasonable date and sort the
images as expected:
$ docker image list
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
hello latest de2bf4786de6 About a minute ago 25.2MB
Attributes `imageName` and `imageTag` are exposed if the image is
built by our Nix tools but not if the image is pulled. So, we expose
these attributes for convenience and homogeneity.
