BuildKit

A toolkit for building container images.

BuildKit is the next-generation builder used by docker build and modern image-build tools. Compared with the legacy Docker build engine it brings concurrent layer builds, secret mounts (so build-time credentials don't leak into image layers), SSH forwarding into the build, remote build caches, and a richer frontend protocol that decouples Dockerfile parsing from the core engine.

The frontend mechanism has enabled alternative build languages: in addition to Dockerfile, BuildKit supports Earthly, Mockerfile, and others through external frontends. The Dockerfile syntax has also gained features in BuildKit (RUN --mount, RUN --network, ARG and FROM scope improvements) that the legacy builder cannot support.

BuildKit ships embedded in modern Docker Engine releases and is the default builder when Docker Buildx is enabled. It also runs stand-alone for use by other container tools like nerdctl and Kaniko-style remote builders. The Moby Project (which Docker contributed to upstream) governs the codebase under the Apache-2.0 licence.

License: Apache-2.0

Category: Containers

Website: https://github.com/moby/buildkit

Install

Bundled with recent Docker releases. Standalone:
  Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install buildkit
  Arch:          sudo pacman -S buildkit

Authors

Docker Inc. and contributors

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