ContainerHive

Swarm it. Build it. Run it. — Managing container base and library images has never been easier.

Motivation

Managing container base images and library images at scale is surprisingly painful. Teams end up with scattered Dockerfiles, manual build scripts, inconsistent tagging, and no dependency tracking between images. CI pipelines are hand-rolled per project, caching is an afterthought, and reproducibility is a dream.

ContainerHive grew out of poc-container-image-manager, a Python-based proof of concept that validated the core idea: declarative, YAML-driven image management with dependency resolution, templating, and CI generation. The PoC proved the concept works — but being Python-based, it required a runtime, bundled platform-specific binaries, and wasn't practical to distribute as a single portable tool.

ContainerHive is the production-grade successor, rewritten in Go as a single static binary with no external dependencies beyond BuildKit. It takes the validated ideas from the PoC and packages them into something you can drop into any CI pipeline or developer workstation without setup overhead.

Features

• Next-gen builds: Powered by BuildKit, the modern container image builder behind Docker.
• Multi-platform ready: Build and push images for any architecture in a single workflow.
• YAML-driven management: Define and maintain image sets and variants declaratively.
• Reproducible layers: Guarantee consistent, bit-for-bit identical builds every time (given the same inputs).
• Testing built in: Validate images as part of the build process, no extra tooling needed.
• Smart caching: Optimized caching via S3 or registry backends, no manual tuning required.
• SBOM generation: Generate CycloneDX SBOMs for all built images using Syft.
• CI pipeline generation: Generate GitLab CI and GitHub Actions pipelines from your project definition.
• Bring your own BuildKit: Connect to any BuildKit instance — local daemon, shared cluster service, or sidecar in a hardened Kubernetes environment.
• Enterprise-ready: Built for scale, compliance, and integration with enterprise workflows.

Supported platforms

The following platforms have prebuilt binaries:

• Linux
  • 64-bit
  • ARM 64-bit
• Darwin
  • 64-bit (Intel)
  • ARM 64-bit (Apple Silicon)
• Docker (x86 & ARM)

Requirements

• BuildKit daemon
• S3-compatible storage for caching (optional)

Installation

See the installation guide for detailed instructions.

Documentation

Documentation is available at container-hive.timo-reymann.de, hosted on GitHub Pages.

Contributing

I love your input! I want to make contributing to this project as easy and transparent as possible, whether it's:

• Reporting a bug
• Discussing the current state of the configuration
• Submitting a fix
• Proposing new features
• Becoming a maintainer

To get started please read the Contribution Guidelines.

Development

Requirements

• GNU make
• Docker
• pre-commit
• Go

Test

make test-coverage-report

Build

make build

AI Usage

This project uses AI tooling to assist with development. All AI-generated or AI-assisted changes are human-reviewed and applied responsibly — this is not AI slop. Contributors are expected to uphold the same standard: AI tools are welcome, but every change must be understood, reviewed, and owned by the person submitting it.

Credits

Without these libraries this project would not be possible:

• syft by Anchore
• buildkit by the Moby Project
• container-structure-test by Google
• hadolint