Re: "guix pack -f docker" does too much work

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hi,

Michal Atlas <michal_atlas+gnu@posteo.net> skribis:

> I greatly agree, it would be an awesome QOL improvement.

If there’s consensus, let’s see how we can get that done.  The advantage
of having (guix docker) & co. all in Scheme is that moving it from a
derivation to code running straight from ‘guix pack’ is definitely
feasible (a bit of work though because ‘guix pack’ has quite a few
backends).

> Just want to mention that it might be nice to take inspiration from
> the Nix dockerTools, since they already have quite a lot of effort put
> into this.
>
> Including for example an option called `streamLayeredImage` [1] which
> doesn't generate a tarball at all, but rather a script that outputs
> the layers without assembling them, in a format which Docker or Podman
> can import without the huge intermediary file.
>
> i.e. $(guix pack ...) | docker load
>
> [1]:
> https://ryantm.github.io/nixpkgs/builders/images/dockertools/#ssec-pkgs-dockerTools-streamLayeredImage

Nice!  Sounds very much in line with what Ricardo was proposing.

> Also seems that Nix's way only quickly imports the changed layers? And
> Guix's always imports the whole thing, at least I think?

What do you mean by “imports the whole thing”?

Thanks,
Ludo’.