oci-modelcar 0.3.0

Stream HuggingFace models directly into OCI registries as multi-layer images

oci-modelcar

Stream HuggingFace models directly into OCI registries as multi-layer images, suitable for KServe with native OCI image volumes (KEP-4639).

Why

Pushing a HuggingFace model to an OCI registry typically means:

1. Triple-trip: HF -> local cache -> registry
2. One huge layer: no cross-repo blob mount possible
3. No resume: a 5 GB shard failing at 4.5 GB starts over

oci-modelcar streams in pure Python:

• HF -> registry directly, no disk persistence
• One uncompressed tar layer per file (digest == diff_id)
• Three-level resume: HF Range request, OCI session resync, file-level state file
• Memory bounded to ~16 MiB per worker

Install

pip install oci-modelcar

Quick start

export HF_TOKEN=hf_...
export OCI_USERNAME=...
export OCI_PASSWORD=...

oci-modelcar push \
  --hf-repo Qwen/Qwen3-30B-A3B \
  --registry registry.example.com \
  --target-repo models/qwen3-30b

The image tag defaults to the first 12 characters of the resolved HF commit SHA (e.g. a3f47b09c8d2).

Authentication

HuggingFace (aligned with huggingface-cli):

• HF_TOKEN env var (recommended)
• ~/.cache/huggingface/token (created by huggingface-cli login)

OCI registry:

• OCI_USERNAME + OCI_PASSWORD env vars (recommended for CI)
• ~/.docker/config.json (docker login writes here)
• $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/containers/auth.json (podman login)

Local registries (hostnames localhost, 127.x.x.x, ::1) automatically use plain HTTP. Pass an explicit http:// or https:// prefix on --registry to override.

Common options

Option	Default	Description
--hf-revision	main	Branch, tag, or 40-char SHA
--target-tag	<sha[:12]>	Image tag
--also-tag	—	CSV of alias tags
--workers	1	Parallel layers (cap 8)
--chunk-mib	8	PATCH chunk size
--state-file	~/.local/state/oci-modelcar/state.json	JSON resume state
--fail-fast / --continue-on-error	fail-fast	Failure policy
--log-style	auto	text or azure
--dry-run	—	List files, don't push

Full list: oci-modelcar push --help.

Resume after failure

State is automatically saved per file. If a push is killed (kill, OOM, network loss), re-running the same command resumes:

# First run, killed mid-way
oci-modelcar push --hf-repo X --registry Y --target-repo Z
# ^C

# Re-run: skips files already pushed
oci-modelcar push --hf-repo X --registry Y --target-repo Z

Force a full re-push with --force.

OCI compliance

Compliant with OCI Distribution v1.1 and OCI Image Spec v1.1:

• Chunked PATCH uploads with Content-Range: N-M (inclusive, no bytes prefix per OCI spec)
• Resume via GET /v2/<repo>/blobs/uploads/<id> and the Range: 0-N header
• 416 Range Not Satisfiable is treated as "ask the server, sync, retry"
• HEAD validation cross-checks Docker-Content-Digest
• Layers use application/vnd.oci.image.layer.v1.tar (uncompressed) so layer.digest == diff_id by construction

Signing & verification

oci-modelcar itself does not sign artifacts — signature is delegated to cosign, the canonical OCI signing tool. Each push exposes the canonical digest reference for direct piping into cosign:

oci-modelcar push --hf-repo ... --registry ... --target-repo ...
# IMAGEREFDIGEST=registry.example.com/models/qwen3-30b@sha256:...

# Sign keyless (CI with OIDC, e.g. GitHub Actions with id-token: write)
cosign sign $IMAGEREFDIGEST

# Sign with a static key (offline / regulated environments)
cosign generate-key-pair                  # one-time, produces cosign.key + cosign.pub
cosign sign --key cosign.key $IMAGEREFDIGEST

# Verify (consumer side, e.g. KServe operator)
cosign verify $IMAGEREFDIGEST \
    --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github\.com/your-org/' \
    --certificate-oidc-issuer 'https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com'

# Or with the static public key
cosign verify --key cosign.pub $IMAGEREFDIGEST

The signature is stored as an additional artifact in the same OCI registry, attached to the manifest by digest (referrers API for OCI Distribution v1.1+, or :sha256-<digest>.sig tag for legacy registries — cosign auto-detects).

PyPI artifact

The oci-modelcar PyPI distribution is signed with PEP 740 digital attestations generated by GitHub Actions in keyless OIDC mode. Verify with:

pip install pypi-attestations
DIST_DIR=$(mktemp -d)
pip download --no-deps --no-build-isolation -d "$DIST_DIR" oci-modelcar >/dev/null
python -m pypi_attestations verify pypi \
    --repository codanael/oci-modelcar \
    "$DIST_DIR"/oci_modelcar-*.whl

Releasing (maintainers)

1. Bump version in pyproject.toml and update CHANGELOG.md.
2. Tag: git tag v0.1.0 && git push --tags.
3. The release.yml workflow builds, publishes to PyPI via Trusted Publishing, and creates a GitHub Release.

PyPI trusted publisher must be configured once: on pypi.org -> Project Settings -> Publishing -> Add publisher with:

• Owner: codanael
• Repo: oci-modelcar
• Workflow: release.yml
• Environment: pypi

License

MIT