mkosi VS pack

I work with a free and open-source software community called Fedora Project. I had the opportunity to moderate the talk of one of the maintainers of the Systemd suite during the annual contributor conference, Flock To Fedora 2023 where he talked about a tool named Mkosi.

For testing i prefer systemd-nspawn containers with mkosi. A neat tool for running your other fav. distro in a terminal. Works like a charm and integrates nicely in your system. Eg. logs and systemd services or CI testing.

- https://github.com/systemd/mkosi

- man:systemd-nspawn(1)

- man:machinectl(1)

you're gonna have to build this on an x86 pc. sudo dnf install arch-install-scripts bubblewrap gdisk qemu-user-static rsync systemd-container python3 -m pip install --user git+https://github.com/systemd/mkosi.git git clone https://github.com/leifliddy/asahi-fedora-usb.git cd asahi-fedora-usb

There's also mkosi: https://github.com/systemd/mkosi. This one outputs an iso or similar image file and supports many base distributions.

[1] https://github.com/systemd/mkosi/issues/376

System's mkosi is worth checking out too: https://github.com/systemd/mkosi I don't think it generates docker/OCI images directly, but it definitely can generate a tarball of the final image contents and then crane of a similar tool could package it up into an appropriate image. For just docker usage it's probably overkill, the main advantage would be it can build other image types like adding a kernel and init to be a fully bootable iso of VM image.

Constellation ensures that all K8s nodes run on AMD-based Confidential VMs (CVMs). CVMs are strongly isolated from the host and remain encrypted in memory at runtime. Constellation also ensures that all nodes run the same minimal mkosi-based node image.

At first glance I thought your project is a frontend for mkosi but then I saw that you support non-systemd targets too. Mentioning it here because it may be relevant to other users/developers.

I've recently found this quote by Kelsey Hightower:

"I'm convinced the majority of people managing infrastructure just want a PaaS. The only requirement: it has to be built by them."

Source: https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/85193508753294540...

In the last few weeks, I've experimented a bit with Flux (https://fluxcd.io/), Tekton (https://tekton.dev/) and Cloud Native Buildpacks (https://buildpacks.io/) on how to provide K8s powered git push deployments without using a dedicated CI/CD server.

My project is still in early alpha stage and just a proof of concept :-) My vision is to expand it into an Open Source PaaS in the future.

Do you think the above quote is true? What does an open source PaaS need to be like in order to be accepted by software developers?

Some other projects have been discontinued in the past (like Flynn or Deis) or were created before the Kubernetes era.

Is it the right direction to provide a Heroku like solution based on K8s or is it better to provide an Open Source Infrastructure as Code library with building blocks to avoid everything from scratch?

```bash (curl -sSL "https://github.com/buildpacks/pack/releases/download/v0.28.0/pack-v0.28.0-linux-arm64.tgz" | sudo tar -C /usr/local/bin/ --no-same-owner -xzv pack)

Although Dockerfiles have the benefit of migrating existing workloads to containers without having to update your toolchain, I definitely prefer the container-first workflow. Cloud Native [Buildpacks](https://buildpacks.io/) are a CNCF incubating project but were proven at Heroku. Buildpacks support common languages, but working on a Go project I've also had a great experience with [ko](https://ko.build/). Free yourself from Dockerfile!

Cloud Native Buildpacks

It's big and overwhelming and sometimes scary. But you know what? It's also fun, engaging, and very refreshing. Because I'm a DevRel, I don't have many chances to focus on something particular. Still, I'm having a lot of fun exploring different CMSs (like Statamic, Craft, or Sanity), new approaches (at last, I understood why the headless approach is so important), and diving into tech I never used before (hello Buildpacks).