A stack is composed of two images that are intended to work together:
If you’re using the
pack
CLI, runningpack stack suggest
will display a list of recommended stacks that can be used when runningpack builder create
, along with each stack’s associated build and run images.
Stacks are used by builders and are configured through a builder’s configuration file:
[[buildpacks]]
# ...
[[order]]
# ...
[stack]
id = "com.example.stack"
build-image = "example/build"
run-image = "example/run"
run-image-mirrors = ["gcr.io/example/run", "registry.example.com/example/run"]
By providing the required [stack]
section, a builder author can configure a stack’s ID, build image, and run image
(including any mirrors).
Run image mirrors provide alternate locations for run images, for use during build
(or rebase
).
When running build
with a builder containing run image mirrors, pack
will select a run image
whose registry location matches that of the specified app image (if no registry host is specified in the image name,
DockerHub is assumed). This is useful when publishing the resulting app image (via the --publish
flag or via
docker push
), as the app’s base image (i.e. run image) will be located on the same registry as the app image itself,
reducing the amount of data transfer required to push the app image.
In the following example, assuming a builder configured with the example TOML above, the selected run image will be
registry.example.com/example/run
.
$ pack build registry.example.com/example/app
while naming the app without a registry specified, example/app
, will cause example/run
to be selected as the app’s
run image.
$ pack build example/app
For local development, it’s often helpful to override the run image mirrors in a builder. For this, the
pack config run-image-mirrors
command can be used. This command does not modify the builder, and instead configures the user’s local machine.To see what run images are configured for a builder, the
inspect-builder
command can be used.inspect-builder
will output built-in and locally-configured run images for a given builder, among other useful information. The order of the run images in the output denotes the order in which they will be matched duringbuild
.
To learn how to create your own stack, see our Operator’s Guide.