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Chainguard Container for ko

Minimal image to build and deploy Go applications using ko

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/ko:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Usage

This is an image that contains ko, go, and build-base.

This image is designed for use in situations where you would like to use ko with codebases that have C dependencies where cgo must be used. In these cases, staticly linking against musl instead of glibc results in smaller binaries.

Using with CGO

Navigate to the example/ directory:

cd example/

Then run:

docker run --rm -it \
  -v ${PWD}:/work \
  --workdir=/work \
  -e KO_DOCKER_REPO=example.com \
  -e CGO_ENABLED=1 \
  cgr.dev/chainguard/ko build ./ \
    --push=false \
    --preserve-import-paths

This will build the example program, but not push it, due to --push=false.

To push, you will need to mount in your Docker config to provide auth by adding:

  -v $DOCKER_CONFIG:/docker-config \
  -e DOCKER_CONFIG=/docker-config \

If you're using Docker credential helpers, those will need to be made available in the container as well so that ko can invoke them.

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard Containers are minimal container images that are secure by default.

In many cases, the Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Containers are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a -dev variant.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to leverage the -dev variants, copying application artifacts into a final minimal container that offers a reduced attack surface that won’t allow package installations or logins.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Containers, please visit Chainguard Academy and Chainguard Courses.

In addition to Containers, Chainguard offers VMs and Libraries. Contact Chainguard to access additional products.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.

Licenses

Chainguard container images contain software packages that are direct or transitive dependencies. The following licenses were found in the "latest" version of this image:

  • Apache-2.0

  • BSD-2-Clause

  • BSD-3-Clause

  • CC-BY-4.0

  • GCC-exception-3.1

  • GPL-2.0

  • GPL-2.0-only

For a complete list of licenses, please refer to this Image's SBOM.

Software license agreement

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