How to Use Paketo Builders

Paketo distributes several builders. This documentation explains how to use the Paketo builders to build applications and how create your own builders. For a full list of available Paketo builders, see the Builders reference documentation.

Use a Paketo builder

Paketo provides several builders that are compatible with Paketo buildpacks. You can choose which builder you want to use based on what packages you want available in your stack and which Paketo buildpacks you want to use. The available builders are listed in the builders reference documentation.

With pack

To build an app with the pack CLI and a specific Paketo builder, use the --builder flag at build time.

pack build my-nodejs-app --builder paketobuildpacks/builder-jammy-base:latest

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With Tekton

To use a Paketo builder image to build apps in a Tekton pipeline, follow the Cloud Native Buildpacks documentation for creating a Tekton pipeline and set the BUILDER_IMAGE parameter of the buildpacks task to point to a published Paketo builder.

- name: buildpacks # This task uses the `buildpacks` task to build the application
      taskRef:
        name: buildpacks
      params:
        - name: BUILDER_IMAGE
          value: paketobuildpacks/builder-jammy-base:latest # This is the builder we want the task to use (REQUIRED)

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Extend a Paketo builder

Paketo builders are OCI images like any others, which means you can extend them with a Dockerfile. To extend a Paketo builder, use a Dockerfile as follows:

cat > builder.Dockerfile << EOF
# pick a Paketo builder that suits your needs
FROM paketobuildpacks/builder-jammy-base:latest

# use the root user to enable privileged actions
USER 0:0

# install packages
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install \
  -y --no-install-recommends \
  git && \
  apt-get clean && \
  rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# switch back to the cnb user to prevent
# consumers from executing privileged actions
USER cnb
EOF

docker build -t my-builder-image -f builder.Dockerfile .

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Note: Extending a builder in this way will only add packages to the build environment where buildpacks run. Installed packages will not be available at runtime, because the builder’s run image will be unaffected. For more control over build- and runtime packages, see the documentation on creating your own stack.

Create your own builder

To create your own builder, follow the Cloud Native Buildpacks documentation. You can still use Paketo builder repository automation to maintain your builder.