A faster path to container images in Bazel

Funny that the article only obliquely references the compression issues. The OCI users that I have seen are using gzip due to inertia, while zstd layers have been supported for a while and are radically faster.

Re: A faster path to container images in Bazel

#5

Post by forrestthewoods » Wed, Dec 24, 2025, 7:18 PM UTC

Uhhh what? Isn’t the whole point of Bazel that it’s a monorepo with all dependencies so you don’t need effing docker just to build or run a bloody computer program?

It drives me absolute batshit insane that modern systems are incapable of either building or running computer programs without docker. Everyone should profoundly embarrassed and ashamed by this.

I’m a charlatan VR and gamedev that primarily uses Windows. But my deeply unpopular opinion is that windows is a significantly better dev environment and runtime environment because it doesn’t require all this Docker garbage. I swear that building and running programs does not actually have to be that complicated!! Linux userspace got pretty much everything related to dependencies and packages very very very wrong.

I am greatly pleased and amused that the most reliable API for gaming in Linux is Win32 via Proton. That should be a clear signal that Linux userspace has gone off the rails.

Re: A faster path to container images in Bazel

#6

Post by jakewins » Wed, Dec 24, 2025, 7:29 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #5

Uhhh what? Isn’t the whole point of Bazel that it’s a monorepo with all dependencies so you don’t need effing docker just to build or run a bloody computer program? It drives me absolute batshit insane that modern systems are incapable of either building or running computer programs without docker. Everyone should profoundly embarrassed and ashamed by this. I’m a charlatan VR and gamedev that primarily uses Windows.…

You’re converging a lot of ground here! The article is about producing container images for deployment, and have no relation to Bazels building stuff for you - if you’re not deploying as containers, you don’t need this?

On Linux vs Win32 flame warring: can you be more specific? What specifically is very very wrong with Linux packaging and dependency resolution?

Re: A faster path to container images in Bazel

#7

Post by cyberax » Wed, Dec 24, 2025, 7:47 PM UTC

I'm struggling with the caching right now. I'm trying to switch from the Github actions to just running stuff in containers, and it works. Except for caching.

Buildkit from Docker is just a pure bullshit design. Instead of the elegant layer-based system, there's now two daemons that fling around TAR files. And for no real reason that I can discern. But the worst thing is that the caching is just plain broken.

Re: A faster path to container images in Bazel

#8

Post by forrestthewoods » Wed, Dec 24, 2025, 7:48 PM UTC

jakewins wrote: post #6

forrestthewoods wrote: post #5

Uhhh what? Isn’t the whole point of Bazel that it’s a monorepo with all dependencies so you don’t need effing docker just to build or run a bloody computer program? It drives me absolute batshit insane that modern systems are incapable of either building or running computer programs without docker. Everyone should profoundly embarrassed and ashamed by this. I’m a charlatan VR and gamedev that primarily uses Windows.…

You’re converging a lot of ground here! The article is about producing container images for deployment, and have no relation to Bazels building stuff for you - if you’re not deploying as containers, you don’t need this? On Linux vs Win32 flame warring: can you be more specific? What specifically is very very wrong with Linux packaging and dependency resolution?

> The article is about producing container images for deployment

Fair. Docker does trigger my predator drive.

I’m pretty shocked that the Bazel workflow involves downloading Docker base images from external URLs. That seems very unbazel like! That belongs in the monorepo for sure.

> What specifically is very very wrong with Linux packaging and dependency resolution?

Linux userspace for the most part is built on a pool of global shared libraries and package managers. The theory is that this is good because you can upgrade libfoo.so just once for all programs on the system.

In practice this turns into pure dependency hell. The total work around is to use Docker which completely nullifies the entire theoretic benefit.

Linux toolchains and build systems are particularly egregious at just assuming a bunch of crap is magically available in the global search path.

Docker is roughly correct in that computer programs should include their gosh darn dependencies. But it introduces so many layers of complexity that are solved by adding yet another layer. Why do I need estargz??

If you’re going to deploy with Docker then you might as well just statically link everything. You can’t always get down to a single exe. But you can typically get pretty close!

Re: A faster path to container images in Bazel

#9

Post by klysm » Wed, Dec 24, 2025, 7:57 PM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #7

I'm struggling with the caching right now. I'm trying to switch from the Github actions to just running stuff in containers, and it works. Except for caching. Buildkit from Docker is just a pure bullshit design. Instead of the elegant layer-based system, there's now two daemons that fling around TAR files. And for no real reason that I can discern. But the worst thing is that the caching is just plain broken.

The layers are tar files, I’m confused what behavior you actually want that isn’t supported.

Re: A faster path to container images in Bazel

#10

Post by dilyevsky » Wed, Dec 24, 2025, 8:03 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #8

jakewins wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re converging a lot of ground here! The article is about producing container images for deployment, and have no relation to Bazels building stuff for you - if you’re not deploying as containers, you don’t need this? On Linux vs Win32 flame warring: can you be more specific? What specifically is very very wrong with Linux packaging and dependency resolution?

> The article is about producing container images for deployment Fair. Docker does trigger my predator drive. I’m pretty shocked that the Bazel workflow involves downloading Docker base images from external URLs. That seems very unbazel like! That belongs in the monorepo for sure. > What specifically is very very wrong with Linux packaging and dependency resolution? Linux userspace for the most part is built on a poo…

> I’m pretty shocked that the Bazel workflow involves downloading Docker base images from external URLs. That seems very unbazel like! That belongs in the monorepo for sure.

Not every dependency in Bazel requires you to "first invent the universe" locally. Lots of examples of this like toolchains, git_repository, http_archive rules and on and on. As long as they are checksum'ed (as they are in this case) so that you can still output a reproducible artifact, I don't see the problem