Docker-pkg¶

Docker-pkg is a tool that allows writing and managing docker images in a unified way, providing out of the box some useful functions:

Dependency tracking between images (so that an image can automatically depend on the latest version of its parent image)
Cache-avoiding out of the box
Support for automatically use build images for creating artifacts
Changelog based versioning (with nightly builds support)
Templating of common operations like installing packages, or image references
Helpers for build environment maintenance: simple purging of images and a utility to recursively update changelogs

Overview¶

docker-pkg can perform three fundamental actions:

build [BUILD_OPTS] <directory> which builds the images in the directory
prune [PRUNE_OPTS] <directory> which prunes old images from the local daemon
update [UPDATE_OPTS] <name> <directory> will create a changelog entry for <name> and all its dependent images so that they will be rebuilt with the next build.

As can be seen, in all cases we provide docker-pkg with a directory where our image definitions are located. docker-pkg will scan that directory recursively for directories containing:

A Dockerfile.template file
A debian-formatted changelog

Based on information in the changelog, on configuration options, and on what is found in the Dockerfile.template, a Dockerfile is generated.

If you chose to build images, that dockerfile (and the content of the directory) are used to build an image. The name and tag of an image will be derived by the last entry its changelog. Finally, the built images will be pushed to the configured registry, when authentication credentials are provided.

Configuration¶

You can provide any variable via a configuration file (in YAML format) that you will then be able to reference in your templates.

A user configuration file $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/docker-pkg.yaml or ~/.config/docker-pkg.yaml will be loaded first when it exists. It can be used to share common settings between multiple docker-pkg definition repositories (for example apt_only_proxy). Settings defined in –configfile take precedence over user settings.

In addition to those, there are some builtin configuration variables that will not only be usable in your templates, but also affect how docker-pkg works:

registry: The address of the docker registry to use for all docker-related operations, including checking the published state of the image. The default value is None, and the default docker registry (that is, dockerhub) will be used.
namespace: The namespace under which all the images to build should live.
username and password: if set, they allow publishing the images you built to a remote repository.
http_proxy: will set the http proxy to be used for all docker-related operations.
apt_only_proxy: will set up an http proxy to be used exclusively by apt. Please note that if you define http_proxy and not this variable, the value of http_proxy will be used as an apt proxy as well.
apt_options: a string containing additional apt options you want to add to the apt command line when installing packages.
base_images: images that are not built by docker-pkg but should be present or pulled in order to be able to build the images.
scan_workers: maximum number of threads to use when scanning local definition of images. For each image found, docker-pkg queries the local Docker daemon and the registry. Default: 8.
known_uid_mappings is a dictionary of username:uid mappings that can be used with the uid template helper.
verify_command and verify_args specify which command to run, with which arguments, to verify that an image that was built actually works as intended. By default, the test.sh file in the image directory will be run, with the image full name as argument. If such file is not found, no verification step proceeds. You can switch to another testing framework, for example by using pytest as follows:

verify_command: pytest
# This assumes your tests will accept a `--image` parameter.
verify_args: ["{path}/test_image.py", "--image", "{image}"]

Build the images¶

This is as simple as launching docker-pkg build, indicating as next argument the directory to scan for dockerfiles.

The build script will search the directory you provided it for Docker image templates, which will be identified by four files:

Dockerfile.template which is the template for the final Dockerfile
changelog which is the changelog for the image and adheres to the Debian changelog format
control (optional) which has the format of a Debian control file, and can be used for pointing out dependencies, build-dependencies, and add any other metadata that could be useful
Dockerfile.build.template (optional) a dockerfile template for a build container (see below)

The name and tag of the image will be determined from the changelog file, so it’s mandatory that you add your changelog entry there. For most containers, a debian-like versioning is a good idea to keep into account the security updates that might happen.

In case you run docker-pkg build with the command-line switch --nightly, a nightly build will be performed, appending the current date and time to the tag defined in the changelog of each image, and thus triggering a rebuild of all images.

The templating system¶

Instead of writing plain dockerfiles, we think using jinja2 templates gives us an edge: there are a lot of common constructs that we don’t want to replicate, and they are exposed to the templates as variables and filters:

Variables¶

registry: the address of the docker registry

Filters¶

image_tag: This filter allows to retrieve the current image tag for a specific image name. This allows to keep all dependencies updated automagically in sync. Example:

FROM {{ registry }}/{{ "nodejs-dev" | image_tag }}
# Will render to e.g. 'FROM my-registry/nodejs-dev:0.3.1'

apt_install: this filter will get the string you pass it as a list of packages to install with apt, and add the correct stanza to your dockerfile. It will also manage the setup of a proxy for apt if one is provided in the configuration via a http_proxy key
apt_remove: this filter will remove the packages listed in the string you pass to it, acting pretty much the same way apt_install does.
uid: this filter will take a username as input, and output the corresponding UID if a corresponding mapping is saved in known_uid_mappings in the configuration.
add_user: this filter will take a username as input, and output the instructions to create an user with that username, as long as an uid mapping is provided in the configuration.

Build-stage artifacts¶

Every build is performed in a temporary directory, and any leftovers of the build (so the build image, any container spawned out of it, etc) will be taken care of by the program.

Prune¶

When you build images often, you’ll end up with a sizable amount of wasted disk space by hosting old image builds on your system. docker-pkg prune will remove from the local docker daemon all those images that are contained in <directory> at version different than the most recent entry in the changelog file.

Update¶

It’s pretty common we need to rebuild a base image and having to rebuild all the images that depend upon it. docker-pkg update partially automates the process creating a changelog entry with a pre-baked message for each of those images. this will trigger a rebuild of those images next time docker-pkg build is launched.

$ docker-pkg update --reason 'CVE-XYZ isArrayish RCE' nodejs images
# This will first check images that are not on the registry or
# locally built and build/publish them
$ docker-pkg build

Troubleshooting¶

When building images on macOS, you may see an error like this:

OSError: Could not find a suitable TLS CA certificate bundle, invalid path: /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt

To work around this, open Keychain Access, navigate to System Roots -> Certificates, select all certificates and go to File -> Export Items. Select the export format as Certificate (.cer). Save the file to a temporary location, then mv it to /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt.

Api¶

`docker_pkg`	Generic helpers
`docker_pkg.builder`	Workflow to process, build and publish image definitions
`docker_pkg.cli`	Command line interface
`docker_pkg.dockerfile`	Dockerfile.template processing
`docker_pkg.drivers`
`docker_pkg.image`	Manipulation of Docker images