oras-pants-plugin

A Pantsbuild plugin that wraps the outputs of package-able targets, such as pex_binary, as OCI artifacts and publishes them to OCI registries with oras. Any registry that stores OCI artifacts works: GitHub Container Registry, Docker Hub, Artifact Registry, ECR, ACR, Harbor, a local registry:2, and so on.

Installation

Add the plugin to pants.toml and enable its backend:

[GLOBAL]
plugins = ["oras-pants-plugin==<version>"]
backend_packages.add = ["pants.backend.python", "oras_pants_plugin"]

[oras.registries.ghcr]
address = "ghcr.io/my-org"
default = true

Wrap the targets to publish in an oci_artifact target, like the builtin archive target does:

# src/app/BUILD
pex_binary(name="app", entry_point="main.py")

oci_artifact(
    name="app-artifact",
    packages=[":app"],
    oci_repository="app",
    oci_tags=["1.2.0", "latest"],
    oci_artifact_type="application/vnd.python.pex.v1",
)

Build it, or build and push it:

pants package src/app:app-artifact   # writes the OCI image layout to dist/src.app/app-artifact/
pants publish src/app:app-artifact   # copies it to ghcr.io/my-org/app:1.2.0 and :latest

Pull it back anywhere with oras pull ghcr.io/my-org/app:1.2.0, which restores src.app/app.pex.

How it works

oras is downloaded as a static binary; nothing is installed into a Pants resolve.

pants package builds every packages target as pants package would, then runs oras push --oci-layout to write one OCI image layout directory to output_path under --distdir. Every file or directory the packages targets produce becomes one layer, titled with its own --distdir-relative path (a packed or loose layout PEX is a directory, pushed as a gzipped tar layer that oras pull unpacks again). The artifact is tagged with every oci_tags entry and the manifest's artifactType is oci_artifact_type.

pants publish packages the target the same way, then runs one oras cp --from-oci-layout per registry, in the foreground so oras can show progress. The copy addresses the layout's manifest by digest, so the published artifact has exactly the digest pants package reported. A target without oci_repository, that resolves to no registry, with skip_oras=True, or run with [oras].skip = true is skipped before it is packaged. Each copy is reported as published, failed or skipped like every other publisher; --publish-output writes the same as JSON, with the registry, repository, tags and digest of each copy.

oci_artifact fields

Configuration

Credentials

oras reads the credentials that docker login or oras login store in $DOCKER_CONFIG/config.json or ~/.docker/config.json, and runs the credential helpers configured there. PATH, HOME and DOCKER_CONFIG are always passed to oras cp, so logging in once is enough:

oras login ghcr.io          # or: docker login ghcr.io
pants publish src/app:app-artifact

In CI, pass the token to a login step before pants publish, or point [oras].config at an auth file. Avoid --to-username/--to-password in [oras].args: pants.toml is committed.

Publishing into a directory

oras cp can write to an OCI image layout directory instead of a registry, which is handy for inspecting what would be pushed. With --to-oci-layout, the registry reference becomes a directory path in the sandbox, so combine it with --keep-sandboxes=always to look at the result:

pants --oras-args="['--to-oci-layout']" --keep-sandboxes=always publish src/app:app-artifact

The layout pants package writes to dist/ is the same artifact; oras discover, oras manifest fetch and oras pull all accept it with --oci-layout:

oras manifest fetch --oci-layout dist/src.app/app-artifact:1.2.0 | jq

Using a different oras version

Add the release's checksums and sizes to known_versions and set version:

[oras]
version = "1.3.5"
known_versions.add = [
  "1.3.5|linux_arm64 |<sha256>|<size>",
  "1.3.5|linux_x86_64|<sha256>|<size>",
  "1.3.5|macos_arm64 |<sha256>|<size>",
  "1.3.5|macos_x86_64|<sha256>|<size>",
]

Compute each line with curl -L $URL | tee >(wc -c) >(shasum -a 256) >/dev/null, where $URL is the oras_<version>_<os>_<arch>.tar.gz asset of the GitHub release (linux/darwin, amd64/arm64). The release's oras_<version>_checksums.txt lists the same checksums.

Supported versions

Pants loads plugins into its own interpreter, so the plugin requires the Python version Pants runs on. The packages being wrapped may target any Python version.

Releases

Wheels are published to PyPI. Release notes live in the changelog and on the GitHub releases page.

Contributing, Bug Reports and Feature Requests

This plugin lives in the pants-plugin-depot repo. See its CONTRIBUTING.md, or open an issue.