What is a buildpack?

A buildpack is a unit of work that inspects your app source code and formulates a plan to build and run your application.

Typical buildpacks are a set of at least three files:

• buildpack.toml – provides metadata about your buildpack
• bin/detect – determines whether buildpack should be applied
• bin/build – executes buildpack logic

Meta-buildpack

There is a different type of buildpack commonly referred to as a meta-buildpack. It contains only a buildpack.toml file with an order configuration that references other buildpacks. This is useful for composing more complex detection strategies.

Anatomy of a buildpack

There are two essential phases that allow buildpacks to create a runnable image.

Detect

A platform sequentially tests groups of buildpacks against your app’s source code. The first group that deems itself fit for your source code will become the selected set of buildpacks for your app. Detection criteria is specific to each buildpack – for instance, an NPM buildpack might look for a package.json, and a Go buildpack might look for Go source files.

Build

During build the buildpacks contribute to the final application image. This contribution could be as simple as setting some environment variables within the image, creating a layer containing a binary (e.g: node, python, or ruby), or adding app dependencies (e.g: running npm install, pip install -r requirements.txt, or bundle install).

Distribution

Buildpacks can be packaged as OCI images on an image registry or Docker daemon. This includes meta-buildpacks.

Reference

Learn more about buildpacks by referring to the Buildpack API.

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