apko

Build OCI images from APK packages directly without Dockerfile (by chainguard-dev)

Apko Alternatives

Similar projects and alternatives to apko

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a better apko alternative or higher similarity.

apko reviews and mentions

Posts with mentions or reviews of apko. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-12-22.
  • Distroless images using melange and apko
    8 projects | dev.to | 22 Dec 2023
    apko allows us to build OCI container images from .apk packages.
  • Build OCI images from APK packages directly without Dockerfile
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Sep 2023
  • Docker Is Four Things
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 31 Aug 2023
    We have built something very similar to what you are describing: https://github.com/chainguard-dev/apko
  • Apko: APK-based OCI image builder
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 7 Aug 2023
  • Tool to build Docker images
    5 projects | /r/devops | 26 May 2023
    apko
  • An Overview of Kubernetes Security Projects at KubeCon Europe 2023
    17 projects | dev.to | 22 May 2023
    Chainguard also appears to have several open source projects.The most popular one is apko, used for building OCI images from APK packages.
  • aws-cli v2: how much smaller can it get? Answer: a lot smaller :)
    5 projects | dev.to | 19 Mar 2023
    Once those are done, I just need to build aws-cli package, put those APK files in a final image with Chainguard's apko.
  • Crafting container images without Dockerfiles
    20 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Feb 2023
    This is one of my absolute favorite topics. Pardon me while I rant and self-promote :D

    Dockerfiles are great for flexibility, and have been a critical contributor to the adoption of Docker containers. It's very easy to take a base image, add a thing to it, and publish your version.

    Unfortunately Dockerfiles are also full of gotchas and opaque cargo-culted best practices to avoid them. Being an open-ended execution environment, it's basically impossible to tell even during the build what's being added to the image, which has downstream implications for anybody trying to get an SBOM from the image for example.

    Instead, I contribute to a number of tools to build and manage images without Dockerfiles. Each of them are less featureful than Dockerfiles, but being more constrained in what they can do, you can get a lot more visibility into what they're doing, since they're not able to do "whatever the user wants".

    1. https://github.com/google/go-containerregistry is a Go module to interact with images in the registry and in tarballs and layouts, in the local docker daemon. You can append layers, squash layers, modify metadata, etc.

    2. crane is a CLI that uses the above (in the same repo) to make many of the same modifications from the commandline. `crane append` for instance adds a layer containing some contents to an image, entirely in the registry, without even pulling the base image.

    3. ko (https://ko.build) is a tool to build Go applications into images without Dockerfiles or Docker at all. It runs `go build`, appends that binary on top of a base image, and pushes it directly to the registry. It generates an SBOM declaring what Go modules went into the app it put into the image, since that's all it can do.

    4. apko (https://apko.dev) is a tool to assemble an image from pre-built apks, without Docker. It's capable of producing "distroless" images easily with config in YAML. It generates an SBOM declaring exactly what apks it put in the image, since that's all it can do.

    Bazel's rules_docker is another contender in the space, and GCP's distroless images use it to place Debian .debs into an image. Apko is its spiritual successor, and uses YAML instead of Bazel's own config language, which makes it a lot easier to adopt and use (IMO), with all of the same benefits.

    I'm excited to see more folks realizing that Dockerfiles aren't always necessary, and can sometimes make your life harder. I'm extra excited to see more tools and tutorials digging into the details of how container images work, and preaching the gospel that they can be built and modified using existing tooling and relatively simple libraries. Excellent article!

  • Vulnerability scanner written in Go that uses osv.dev data
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 16 Dec 2022
    Depends exactly what you're trying to create it for. I advocate for doing it during the build process rather than as a step after.

    We open sourced a few tools that do it automatically for containers:

    https://github.com/chainguard-dev/apko

    https://github.com/chainguard-dev/melange

  • Apko: A Better Way To Build Containers?
    3 projects | dev.to | 13 Oct 2022
    apko takes apk packages and builds them into OCI images (aka Docker images). Sounds quite simple, because it is:
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    www.influxdata.com | 1 May 2024
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Stats

Basic apko repo stats
14
1,060
9.4
1 day ago

chainguard-dev/apko is an open source project licensed under Apache License 2.0 which is an OSI approved license.

The primary programming language of apko is Go.


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