Faster Docker Builds with Depot

Faster Docker Builds with Depot

Author: Bret Fisher March 17, 2023 Duration: 42:58

Bret is joined by Kyle Galbraith and Jacob Gillespie, co-founders of Depot, to discuss their new solution to slow Docker builds.
 

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If you've never dug into some of the details of Dockers BuildKit, that's the engine behind your Docker build command, then this episode is for you. I'm fairly confident that everyone who uses Docker will eventually come upon the problems that Kyle and Jacob were trying to solve with Depot. Their focus is on speeding up your Docker builds by doing them remotely, in a transparent way.

They avoid you needing to rethink your workflows and CI automations and provide a CLI tool that's a drop-in replacement for the Docker build command. In this episode, we walked through the problems they can solve today with what I would call a unified shared build cache for your whole team, including your CI and automation tools.

The way they are going about speeding up the Docker builds is something I wished Docker had done for us all along. I think it's still early days for the Depot product, but if you're suffering with long build image times it's already mature enough to be something I would consider as a replacement for the traditional Docker engine builds that we're all used to.

Streamed live on YouTube on January 12, 2023.

Unedited live recording of this show on YouTube (Ep. #198). Includes demos.

Topic Links★
Depot website
Depot on Twitter

Creators & Guests


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  • (00:00) - DDT MAIN
  • (00:04) - Intro
  • (03:10) - Bret's intro
  • (04:41) - Main show
  • (04:50) - Introducing the guests
  • (05:10) - Today's topic
  • (05:24) - Where did the idea for Depot come from?
  • (06:43) - How it started
  • (08:54) - Describing the problems
  • (10:16) - The caching problem
  • (12:06) - Docker caching default and in CI
  • (15:02) - What is cache busting?
  • (16:40) - Being deliberate about your CI environment
  • (17:40) - What problems is Depot trying to solve?
  • (19:44) - Replacing the Docker CLI with Depot
  • (24:30) - Building for multi-platform
  • (29:10) - Question
  • (32:30) - Question
  • (34:31) - Demo intro
  • (35:02) - Modes of hosting
  • (35:46) - Question
  • (36:50) - What else does the UI offer?
  • (40:38) - Getting started with Depot
  • (41:45) - What's on the horizon?
  • (42:47) - Outro

Bret Fisher hosts DevOps and Docker Talk: Cloud Native Interviews and Tooling alongside Nirmal Mehta, pulling conversations directly from their live audience sessions. This isn't a theoretical lecture series; it's grounded in the practical, often messy realities of building and running modern systems. Each episode digs into the specific tools and philosophies shaping infrastructure today, from the foundational elements like Docker and container orchestration with Kubernetes or Swarm to the broader cultural shifts of DevOps, SRE, and platform engineering. You'll hear discussions that span the entire software lifecycle, touching on the integration of security with DevSecOps, the automation promises of GitOps, and what "Cloud Native" truly means for development teams. The dialogue stays focused on actionable insights and real-world use cases, offering a genuine sense of what works and what doesn't in the field. For anyone navigating the container and cloud ecosystem, this podcast serves as a regular, insightful check-in with practitioners and experts, hosted by someone deeply embedded in the community. The natural, interview-driven format makes complex topics accessible, ensuring listeners come away with more than just buzzwords-they get context and clarity.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

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