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
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- 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.
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