Hacker GitHub

← All repos

GoogleContainerTools/distroless

View on GitHub ↗ ★ 23,191 Starlark

🥑 Language focused docker images, minus the operating system.

77 mentions on Hacker News by 67 people: 12 stories, 65 comments · first 2017-06-09 · latest 2026-08-26

Mentions per year 77 mentions · busiest year 2022 (17)
20082026
  1. https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless These are pretty handy to use
    comment by Zizizizz · 2026-03-08 · in A decade of Docker containers
  2. There are Distroless images! You can make a container with nothing but one executable in it. https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless has some helpers but you can just put your rust or go program into an image & ship it! For if…
    comment by jauntywundrkind · 2025-07-04 · in Kubernetes is a symptom, not a solution
  3. …or python or whatever base image, built on a nice slim OS or distroless (no starter required but https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless is a resource), and add just a little more of your stuff on top. The profile of what needs…
    comment by jauntywundrkind · 2025-07-04 · in Kubernetes is a symptom, not a solution
  4. …what "minimalist" mean (does it mean it's based on Ubuntu Minimal? Alpine? Distroless?). [1] https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  5. …and maintaining a distro, which is normally all done at container build time. From the Debian based https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main... Statically compiled applications (Go) that do not require libc can use the…
  6. …to that only has the bare minimum in it?" This can be taken all the way to the distroless images ( https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ) and means that the security team won't be asking you to fix that CVE that's in Python…
  7. …container images. They were built by the original team that brought you Google's Distroless ( https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ) However, there were few problems with Distroless: 1. distroless were based on Debian - which…
  8. …the bill. Of course, there are better choices than Alpine to optimize image size. Distroless ( https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ) is a good example.
  9. …add unnecessary junk to your images, like a shell. It's also endorsed by Google via distroless: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
    comment by msm_ · 2023-09-20 · in Gokrazy is cool
  10. …"distroless" before. Confusing name for a container with just main process runtimes, but neat idea. https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
    comment by suprjami · 2023-07-30 · in Musl 1.2.4 adds TCP DNS fallback
  11. If you are optimizing for image size, Alpine is not the best choice. For example, Distroless ( https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ) has options 50% smaller than Alpine.
    comment by dharmab · 2023-07-26 · in Alpine Linux does not make the news
  12. …expect to find it in https://github.com/wolfi-dev#faq . Or maybe my google-fu failed me :( [1]: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless [2]: https://github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/issues/5507#issuecommen...
  13. …without the entire OS as other comments mention, an example would be Googles distroless[0] [0]: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  14. …running a full Linux userspace a little bloated. Thankfully there are distroless base images( https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ). Haven't done service dev in a while, so I don't really have experience with this, but it…
    comment by sr-latch · 2023-04-30 · in MRSK: Deploy web apps anywhere
  15. …my own images, I use distroless (gcr.io/distroless/static-debian11:nonroot), and they use 65532: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main... (I tend to write go and CGO_ENABLED=0, so I typically just pick any user and…
  16. …updated our distroless base image for a year and there isn’t even a single vulnerability (this one: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main... ) In terms of defending your software supply chain, eliminating the cruft…
    comment by Arbortheus · 2023-01-17 · in Major standard library changes in Go 1.20
  17. …(Python and Node are supported but lose benefits rapidly depending on any added dependencies) https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
    comment by minimaxir · 2023-01-13 · in Alpine Linux in the Browser (2020)
  18. …application, for example: - production flavor: uses a minimal, nonroot container base image (see: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ) - debug flavor: includes few extra debug tools inside the container
  19. An alternative is a multi step build, then running with Google’s Distroless https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
    comment by atom_arranger · 2022-08-05 · in Minify your container
  20. …static has: ca-certificates, /etc/passwd, /tmp directory, tzdata base has: glibc, libssl, openssl https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/tree/main...
    comment by mhio · 2022-08-03 · in Minify your container
  21. distroless static (the smallest one, https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/tree/main... ) is about 4 MB. It contains things like: /usr/share/zoneinfo/<timezones> /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt /etc/debian_version ... not…
    comment by TheDong · 2022-08-03 · in Minify your container
  22. …redis is even a good idea anymore (outside of ensuring complete feature-set compatibility). [0]: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless [1]: https://hub.docker.com/_/scratch/ [2]: https://github.com/vercel/pkg [3]:…
  23. …I think Google's distroless container images are worth checking out as a quasi-alternative: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless You use them as a base for a docker image and copy in your server code. These images are tailor…
  24. …copy the artifacts into distroless base images. [0] https://github.com/docker-slim/docker-slim [1] https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  25. Google's debian-based distroless is fascinating: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  26. https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless This is the container community’s response to this ambiguity I think.
  27. …make use of this with multistage builds or with build systems like Bazel and Please.build. [0] - https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main...
    comment by gravypod · 2022-03-16 · in How to make Docker images even smaller
  28. …don't more people use distroless? Based on debian so no musl headaches but even lighter than alpine https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
    comment by DrBenCarson · 2022-03-11 · in Alpine Linux: Brilliant Linux Distro
  29. …inputs should produce consistent outputs was fundamental to its philosophy. Build rules like https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless to create minimal, reproducible docker images would seem radical and new most people building…
    comment by dub · 2022-02-06 · in Reproducible Builds in January 2022
  30. …to this. It uses debian as the base and supports cgo because it has glibc (and openssl) [1]: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
    comment by rockwotj · 2022-01-17 · in Gokrazy – A Native Go Userland
  31. …works pretty well. It's small, fast and secure. - https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/jib - https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  32. One way to simply optimize Docker image size is to use https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless Supports Go, Python, Java, out of the box.
  33. …you could use as a base instead which are probably still smaller than many other base images: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless#debug-ima...
  34. …That's about 50% of the size of alpine (~5 MiB), and less than 2% of the size of debian (124 MiB). https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  35. …[0] https://github.com/kata-containers/kata-containers [1] https://github.com/cilium/cilium [2] https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  36. …no reliance on traditional userland tools] being unquestioningly extended to other contexts.) [1] https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  37. Related, https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
    comment by nijave · 2021-06-17 · in Containers are tents
  38. Google's distroless containers attempt to fix this issue: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  39. …bit more backing than this one (pretty well written) blog post, probably also check out distroless: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless I personally find most of the time alpine-based containers are more than small enough…
  40. …just for the consistency. One minimal Docker option with Go is to use a "distroless" Docker image: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/main...
  41. …don't really see that as necessary as it's quite hard to have buffer overflow bugs in go code. [0]: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless [1]: https://gvisor.dev/docs/user_guide/quick_start/docker/
  42. …will build an image with distroless-java plus your app: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/jib https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/blob/mast...
  43. …the 50mb range. But often you don't really need a real distribution inside your docker image. See https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless . But distroless is not about one specific tool or base image, it's a paradigm that…
    comment by ithkuil · 2020-12-27 · in Run More Stuff in Docker
  44. …One can set up an air-gapped environment with access to a private container registry only. [0] https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
  45. Further in that direction, https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless — stripping out as much of the OS code as possible.
    comment by theptip · 2020-10-15 · in Dockerfile Security Best Practices
  46. …approach for both security and performance as well, albeit with limited language support: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
    comment by minimaxir · 2020-10-14 · in Dockerfile Security Best Practices
  47. …like you we could skip the docker shenanigans and just need a JRE to run our uber .jar (distroless https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless/tree/mast... makes a basic JVM docker container easy)
  48. …but just to clarify a point you might not be making, don't put shells and SSH in your containers: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless#why-shoul...
  49. …would be curious to see how these base images stack up against Google's "distroless" base images ( https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless ). I also appreciate that they call out Alpine's compatibility issues (on account of…
    comment by yjftsjthsd-h · 2020-02-19 · in Reducing Docker Image Size
  50. I would recommend multistage build but with distroless as final. https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
    comment by dr01d · 2020-02-11 · in I Was Wrong about Nix