Ricardo Wurmus <rek...@elephly.net> writes: > We have "guix pack" as part of Guix. It builds Docker or squashfs > images as well as various other formats. What does nix2container offer > beyond what we have?
I acutally don't know how you currently build Docker images. But if nix2container brings something, i think it would mainly be optimizations (time and space). Does your built images contains several layers? nix2container uses an heuristic to group store paths into layers. The goal is to share common layers between images and to avoid full image rebuild when only a storepath differs. Do you write the image tarball into your store when you build an image? nix2container is able to build layers on the fly from the Nix store. The goal is to reduce IOs and storage. Instead of writing an image tarball into the store, it generates a script which stream layers from store paths to the destination (a Docker registry, the Docker deamon, Podman or a file). nix2container also has more advanced features allowing to control the layers that are rebuilt. For instance, if you work on a Python application, nix2container would allow to isolate your application and the Python libraries into dedicated layers. When you change something in your application, the layers containing the Python libraries won't have to be rebuilt and pushed to a registry. lewo.
