Building and running containers is a common task for today's software and systems engineers. However, we rarely take the time to understand what is inside of a container image. The container image itself is often viewed as a magical packaging format that is opaque to the people who are using it. However, understanding the contents of a container image can help you troubleshoot, build more robust images, and develop better proficiency with the technology that you are using every day.
In this video, we take a look at what a container image actually is and what is inside of it. We look at pieces of the Open Container Initiative image specification, and we directly inspect a container image to see how the image complies with the specification.
Dockerfile: https://github.com/acritelli/beyond-the-readme/tree/main/unpacking_container_images
VIDEO CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
00:14 - Overview and Background
01:01 - Environment Setup
01:23 - Open Container Initiative Overview
02:03 - OCI Image Specification
02:31 - Building a Basic Container Image
03:37 - Saving an Image File
04:20 - Image File Contents and Index
06:30 - Image Manifest
08:18 - File System Layers
10:30 - File Deletion
12:45 - Image Config
16:57 - Conclusion and Outro
