Hey HN! We're excited to launch our Dockerfile Explorer. It allows you to visualize the lower level build ops (LLB)[0] that a Dockerfile is parsed to that BuildKit is parsed to. We built it to help people leveraging Depot get a better idea of what their Dockerfile is actually equating to at the LLB level.
LLB supports 6 core operations:
- SourceOp loads source files from a Docker image, git repo, or local build context (e.g. FROM)
- ExecOp executes a given command (e.g. RUN)
- FileOp creates, copies or removes files and directories (e.g. COPY, ADD, WORKDIR)
- MergeOp merges its inputs into a single flat layer (e.g. COPY --link)
- DiffOp produces an OCI diff, e.g. "layer", for its inputs (unused in the Dockerfile frontend)
- BuildOp evaluates its input as additional LLB operations to add to the graph to allow for dynamic build graphs (also unused in the Dockerfile frontend)
With the Dockerfile Explorer, we run the Dockerfile frontend[1] that BuildKit uses inside of WASM to parse and produce the LLB output locally in your browser. We then embed the Monaco Editor so that you can change your Dockerfile to see how it impacts the LLB output that BuildKit will use to build your Docker image.
LLB supports 6 core operations:
- SourceOp loads source files from a Docker image, git repo, or local build context (e.g. FROM) - ExecOp executes a given command (e.g. RUN) - FileOp creates, copies or removes files and directories (e.g. COPY, ADD, WORKDIR) - MergeOp merges its inputs into a single flat layer (e.g. COPY --link) - DiffOp produces an OCI diff, e.g. "layer", for its inputs (unused in the Dockerfile frontend) - BuildOp evaluates its input as additional LLB operations to add to the graph to allow for dynamic build graphs (also unused in the Dockerfile frontend)
With the Dockerfile Explorer, we run the Dockerfile frontend[1] that BuildKit uses inside of WASM to parse and produce the LLB output locally in your browser. We then embed the Monaco Editor so that you can change your Dockerfile to see how it impacts the LLB output that BuildKit will use to build your Docker image.
You can see a quick video and read more details on how it all works here: https://depot.dev/blog/dockerfile-explorer.
We'd love any feedback or ideas folks would like around this type of tool!
[0] https://github.com/moby/buildkit#exploring-llb [1] https://github.com/moby/buildkit/tree/master/frontend/docker...