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Multistage builds

The idea behind multistage builds is to make it easy to build smaller container images by facilitating the exclusion of intermediate build files from the final product.

Smaller container images take less space on disk, meaning they take less time to download and deploy. During the compilation of software, it is common to need a compiler, several library dependencies, and intermediate objects that will not be needed during the execution of the program. Multistage builds allow you to define two or more docker build stages in the same Dockerfile. They will be executed in order one after the other, and each "stage" will be able to copy files from the previous ones. This way, we can easily and in the same build process, build the software and then keep only the files that we actually need for the execution.

Usage

Take this Dockerfile:

  • Dockerfile: 
    FROM golang:1.12.6-stretch as builder

RUN mkdir -p /go/src/server
WORKDIR /go/src/server

COPY . .

RUN go get .
RUN CGO_ENABLED=0 go build server.go

FROM alpine:edge

RUN mkdir /app
COPY --from=builder /go/src/server/server /app/server
CMD ["/app/server"]

and this code (golang):

  • server.go: 
    package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "strings"
    "net/http"
    "github.com/pborman/uuid"
)

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/", func (w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        uuidWithHyphen := uuid.NewRandom()
        uuid := strings.Replace(uuidWithHyphen.String(), "-", "", -1)
        fmt.Fprintf(w, "Welcome to my website!\n")
        fmt.Fprintf(w, uuid)
    })

    fmt.Print("Starting server in port 8080...\n")

    http.ListenAndServe(":8080", nil)
}

The Dockerfile can be divided into two parts (or stages), each starting by the FROM instruction:

  1. FROM golang:1.12.6-stretch as builder, uses the official golang image containing everything we need to compile the code. It is labeled as builder. We copy the whole "working directory", including the code with COPY . ., we then get the dependencies RUN go get ., and finally compile the code with RUN CGO_ENABLED=0 go build server.go.
  2. FROM alpine:edge, uses the minimal distribution alpine. In the line COPY --from=builder /go/src/server/server /app/server the compiled program and only the compiled program is copied from the previous stage (build).

In order to test this build process, put the two files in the same directory and name them Dockerfile and server.go. Then run the command:

docker build . -t go-server

This will produce the image called go-server:latest. To check the size of the image just run:

$ docker images go-server
REPOSITORY   TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED        SIZE
go-server    latest    514583ab6fa1   17 hours ago   13MB

it should give you approximately 13MB, which is more than half (~7MB) is the compiled code.

If you pull the image golang:1.12.6-stretch (the one we used for building the code) and check its size, you will see that it is approximately 774MB.

$ docker images golang:1.12.6-stretch
REPOSITORY   TAG              IMAGE ID       CREATED       SIZE
golang       1.12.6-stretch   9fe4cdc1f173   2 years ago   774MB

This same small image (go-server:latest) is of course also achievable by other methods. You can build the code outside of docker and then copy it to the alpine image. You can mount the code directory into the build image, build it and then again copy the compiled product into the alpine image. But none of these methods are as easy and compact as this one.

Usage in Rahti

In order to test this in Rahti, one only needs to login in Rahti, select the correct project, and run:

oc new-build https://github.com/lvarin/multi-stage-build.git

NOTE: The code must be in a git repository and Rahti must be able to clone it.

The end result will be an image called multi-stage-build stored in the internal Rahti registry of the project you selected. This image can then be used in a Rahti deployment using the image stream option when deploying an image.

Upstream documentation

Last update: May 3, 2023