🎙️ Discussion

Dynamic Manifests


Table of contents

  1. What are the challenges that we are trying to solve?
  2. What ideas do we have for how to address these challenges?
  3. How do these ideas break down into…
    1. Already existing OCI specs?
    2. A new project (CNCF or OCI)
  4. Questions?
  5. What pre-existing work or software can support these ideas?
  6. Relevant OCI Issues

What are the challenges that we are trying to solve?

We might want to be able to assemble custom images on demand, meaning that we can request a specific set of packages, and instead of building from source, combine layers into a new manifest to pull dynamically.

What ideas do we have for how to address these challenges?

We would likely need to start with a simple approach that attempts to create layers with one software package installed per layer, and then have a method to be able to assess a set of layers for compatibility. This gets challenging because the model for a container is not amenable to a tree-like architecture (e.g., packages have dependencies) but it might be possible.

How do these ideas break down into…

Already existing OCI specs?

A new project (CNCF or OCI)

We would likely need a way to associate metadata with layers for the compatibility assessment, and then a registry implementation that can accept (or build) layers and then take requests for custom manifests.

Questions?

What pre-existing work or software can support these ideas?

The following works are relevant:

Relevant OCI Issues