Pivotal open sources kpack, a Kubernetes-native image build service

In April, Pivotal and Heroku teamed up to create Cloud Native Buildpacks for Kubernetes. Cloud-Native Buildpacks turn source code into production-ready Docker images that are OCI image compatible and is based around the popular Buildpack model. Yesterday, they open-sourced kpack, which is a set of experimental build service Kubernetes resource controllers.

Basically, kpack is Kubernetes’ native way to build and update containers. It automates the creation and update of container images that can be run anywhere. Pivotal’s commercial implementation of kpack comes via Pivotal Build Service. Users can use it atop Kubernetes to boost developer productivity. The Build Service integrates kpack with buildpacks and the Kubernetes permissions model. kpack presents a CRD as its interface, and users can interact with all Kubernetes API tooling including kubectl.

Pivotal has open-sourced kpack for two reasons, as mentioned in their blog post.

“First, to provide Build Service’s container building functionality and declarative logic as a consumable component that can be used by the community in other great products.

Second, to provide a first-class interface, to create and modify image resources for those who desire more granular control.”

Many companies and communities have announced that they will be using Kpack in their projects. Project riff will use kpack to build functions to handle events. The Cloud Foundry community plans to feature kpack as the new app staging mechanism in the Cloud Foundry Application Runtime.

Check out the kpack repo for more details. You can also request alpha access to Build Service.

In other news, Pivotal and VMware, the former’s parent company are negotiating a deal for VMware to acquire Pivotal as per a recent regulatory filing from Dell. VMware, Pivotal, and Dell have jointly filed the document informing the government regulators about the potential transaction.