[atomic-devel] docs-first RFE for stripping containers

[Jim Perrin <jperrin centos org>]

Keeping a container small is often important, and a number of
sub-projects have spun up around keeping the size of a container down.

Would there be value in having a utility that can 'strip' a container of
unused file and rpm data in order to keep the size down? My basic
thinking is that once a container is built, there are a large number of
files in the container that simply take up space. Examples: glibc locale
files[1], timezone data, cracklib (brought in by pam for new user
passwords), and others.

The idea for the workflow would be that once a dev has a functional
container they're happy with, they can (optionally) strip it to help
keep the size down. Gross correlation here would be stripping a binary
of debug info.

The resulting container would have no concept of rpms or dependency
tracking, but would be significantly smaller in size.


I'm unsure if this would fit into something like what vbatts is working
on with docker-utils, or would be something else.


I may not have phrased this overly well in my post-fosdem stupor, but
the basic idea should be intact. Thoughts, comments?



[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=156477




-- 
Jim Perrin
The CentOS Project | http://www.centos.org
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