buildah - a tool which facilitates building OCI container images

Note: this package is in alpha, but is close to being feature-complete.

The buildah package provides a command line tool which can be used to

• create a working container, either from scratch or using an image as a starting point
• create an image, either from a working container or via the instructions in a Dockerfile
• images can be built in either the OCI image format or the traditional upstream docker image format
• mount a working container's root filesystem for manipulation
• unmount a working container's root filesystem
• use the updated contents of a container's root filesystem as a filesystem layer to create a new image
• delete a working container or an image

Installation notes

Prior to installing buildah, install the following packages on your linux distro:

• make
• golang (Requires version 1.8.1 or higher.)
• bats
• btrfs-progs-devel
• device-mapper-devel
• gpgme-devel
• libassuan-devel
• git
• bzip2
• go-md2man
• runc
• skopeo-containers

In Fedora, you can use this command:

 dnf -y install \
    make \
    golang \
    bats \
    btrfs-progs-devel \
    device-mapper-devel \
    gpgme-devel \
    libassuan-devel \
    git \
    bzip2 \
    go-md2man \
    runc \
    skopeo-containers

Then to install buildah follow the steps in this example:

  mkdir ~/buildah
  cd ~/buildah
  export GOPATH=`pwd` 
  git clone https://github.com/projectatomic/buildah ./src/github.com/projectatomic/buildah 
  cd ./src/github.com/projectatomic/buildah 
  make 
  make install
  buildah --help

buildah uses runc to run commands when buildah run is used, or when buildah build-using-dockerfile encounters a RUN instruction, so you'll also need to build and install a compatible version of runc for buildah to call for those cases.

Commands

Command	Description
buildah-add(1)	Add the contents of a file, URL, or a directory to the container.
buildah-bud(1)	Build an image using instructions from Dockerfiles.
buildah-commit(1)	Create an image from a working container.
buildah-config(1)	Update image configuration settings.
buildah-containers(1)	List the working containers and their base images.
buildah-copy(1)	Copies the contents of a file, URL, or directory into a container's working directory.
buildah-from(1)	Creates a new working container, either from scratch or using a specified image as a starting point.
buildah-images(1)	List images in local storage.
buildah-inspect(1)	Inspects the configuration of a container or image.
buildah-mount(1)	Mount the working container's root filesystem.
buildah-push(1)	Copies an image from local storage.
buildah-rm(1)	Removes one or more working containers.
buildah-rmi(1)	Removes one or more images.
buildah-run(1)	Run a command inside of the container.
buildah-tag(1)	Add an additional name to a local image.
buildah-umount(1)	Unmount a working container's root file system.

Future goals include:

• more CI tests
• additional CLI commands (?)