polygott VS nixery

> For context, I'm referencing our (legacy) base image for projects on Replit: Polygott (https://github.com/replit/polygott/).

May I ask why you didn't use something like Ansible to build such a complex image? With appropriate package version pinning (which it's the real crux here) it should work well enough to get a reproducible build.

I understand it would already have been something different from a pure Dockerfile so it's not that fair to compare buuut...

Look into how repl.it built their platform, especially their polygott Docker image. You can find out plenty of information about how these systems are built if you delve deeper into their ecosystem.

Repl.it has an in-progress OCaml repl option sort of hidden away because it's "WIP"; and by WIP I mean it works for editing and saving is basically broken otherwise and has been for a few years (according to Sys.ocaml_version it's using OCaml 4.05 from 2017) because of a claim of focusing on core features instead of more languages. Though that didn't stop them from adding other languages since, including adding ReasonML (via NodeJS and BuckleScript) since then, so the argument is bullshit and they'll probably never get it working.

If you look at the repo under the gen directory you’ll see the Dockerfile template. It builds on the Ubuntu base image (line 6 FROM Ubuntu...) which means you will get a bash shell (default login shell) in each container built from it.

You said the spat was about him "allegedly open sourcing their project". How could he do that when it was already open source (at https://github.com/replit/polygott)?

Slightly off-topic - what is a secure way to run arbitrary code in arbitrary languages in a server? I know replit's polygott docker container allows it.

https://github.com/replit/polygott/

The ones from https://nixery.dev/

You can build your own with https://nixery.dev/

I built a service for doing this ad-hoc via image names a few years ago and it enjoys some popularity with CI & debugging use-cases: https://nixery.dev/

name is eerily similar to `nixpkgs`, i.e. the monorepo that defines all packages and one of the underlying technologies here. i get the play on buildpacks, but still, as a nix user it makes me do a double take reading the name

this is neat though, and in political terms, the elevator pitch mentions nix itself as an implementation detail in passing. hopefully, if this catches on, it'll function as a non-threatening gateway drug to nix itself, when users inevitably go digging into the weeds

for anyone interested, prior art on the nix container front: https://nixery.dev

Wow, this is excellent! At a previous job, we had been using k8s + knative to spin up containers on demand, and likewise were unhappy with the delays. Spawner seems excellent.

One question: have you had to do any custom container builds on demand, and if so, have you had to deal with large containers (e.g. a Python base image with a few larger packages installed from PyPI)? We would run up against extremely long build image times using tools like kaniko, and caching would typically have only a limited benefit.

I was experimenting using Nix to maybe solve some of these problems, but never got far enough to run a speed test, and then left the job before finishing. But it seems to me some sort of algorithm like Nixery uses (https://nixery.dev) to generate cacheable layers with completely repeatable builds and nothing extraneous would help.

Maybe that's not a problem you had to solve, but if it is, I'd love your thoughts.

Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix\ (38 comments)