Re: Guix Docker image inflation

[Stephen Scheck]

On Sun, May 31, 2020 at 5:37 AM zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> wrote:

> No, it is how Docker is designed.  Maybe the terminology "layer" is
> not the Docker one but when the images are chained, one cannot remove
> the data of the previous layer of the total image.
>

I'm not disagreeing with that, but IF any of the store files resulting from
`guix pull`
are ephemeral (i.e. intermediate build results not anchored to a profile)
AND guix
GC worked inside the container, my approach might still work - yes there
would be
image and layers growth but it might be small enough not to care between
periodic image
rebases. But I'm starting to doubt that, or at least it is difficult to
quantify with the
GC issues.


> Because if you run Guix outside an Docker container, you will not have
> the issue.  The main issue is how the Docker "filesystem" is designed.
>

Actually, there might be another way around this, still avoiding the need
for a custom Runner,
for example mounting /var/guix and /gnu/store into the container instead of
belonging to it. If
done that way, layer accumulation wouldn't be an issue, and maybe GC
between layers neither.