NOTE: kaniko is not an officially supported Google product
kaniko is a tool to build container images from a Dockerfile, inside a container or Kubernetes cluster.
kaniko doesn't depend on a Docker daemon and executes each command within a Dockerfile completely in userspace. This enables building container images in environments that can't easily or securely run a Docker daemon, such as a standard Kubernetes cluster.
kaniko is meant to be run as an image: gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor
. We do not recommend running the kaniko executor binary in another image, as it might not work.
We'd love to hear from you! Join us on #kaniko Kubernetes Slack
📣 Please fill out our quick 5-question survey so that we can learn how satisfied you are with kaniko, and what improvements we should make. Thank you! 👯
If you are interested in contributing to kaniko, see DEVELOPMENT.md and CONTRIBUTING.md.
Table of Contents generated with DocToc
- Community
- How does kaniko work?
- Known Issues
- Demo
- Tutorial
- Using kaniko
- kaniko Build Contexts
- Using Azure Blob Storage
- Using Private Git Repository
- Using Standard Input
- Running kaniko
- Caching
- Pushing to Different Registries
- Additional Flags
- --build-arg
- --cache
- --cache-dir
- --cache-repo
- --cache-ttl duration
- --cleanup
- --context-sub-path
- --customPlatform
- --digest-file
- --dockerfile
- --force
- --git
- --image-name-with-digest-file
- --image-name-tag-with-digest-file
- --insecure
- --insecure-pull
- --insecure-registry
- --label
- --log-format
- --log-timestamp
- --no-push
- --oci-layout-path
- --registry-certificate
- --registry-mirror
- --reproducible
- --single-snapshot
- --skip-tls-verify
- --skip-tls-verify-pull
- --skip-tls-verify-registry
- --skip-unused-stages
- --snapshotMode
- --tarPath
- --target
- --use-new-run
- --verbosity
- --whitelist-var-run
- Debug Image
- Security
- Comparison with Other Tools
- Community
- Limitations
We'd love to hear from you! Join #kaniko on Kubernetes Slack
The kaniko executor image is responsible for building an image from a Dockerfile and pushing it to a registry. Within the executor image, we extract the filesystem of the base image (the FROM image in the Dockerfile). We then execute the commands in the Dockerfile, snapshotting the filesystem in userspace after each one. After each command, we append a layer of changed files to the base image (if there are any) and update image metadata.
- kaniko does not support building Windows containers.
- Running kaniko in any Docker image other than the official kaniko image is not supported (ie YMMV).
- This includes copying the kaniko executables from the official image into another image.
- kaniko does not support the v1 Registry API (Registry v1 API Deprecation)
For a detailed example of kaniko with local storage, please refer to a getting started tutorial.
To use kaniko to build and push an image for you, you will need:
- A build context, aka something to build
- A running instance of kaniko
kaniko's build context is very similar to the build context you would send your Docker daemon for an image build; it represents a directory containing a Dockerfile which kaniko will use to build your image.
For example, a COPY
command in your Dockerfile should refer to a file in the build context.
You will need to store your build context in a place that kaniko can access. Right now, kaniko supports these storage solutions:
- GCS Bucket
- S3 Bucket
- Azure Blob Storage
- Local Directory
- Local Tar
- Standard Input
- Git Repository
Note about Local Directory: this option refers to a directory within the kaniko container. If you wish to use this option, you will need to mount in your build context into the container as a directory.
Note about Local Tar: this option refers to a tar gz file within the kaniko container. If you wish to use this option, you will need to mount in your build context into the container as a file.
Note about Standard Input: the only Standard Input allowed by kaniko is in .tar.gz
format.
If using a GCS or S3 bucket, you will first need to create a compressed tar of your build context and upload it to your bucket. Once running, kaniko will then download and unpack the compressed tar of the build context before starting the image build.
To create a compressed tar, you can run:
tar -C <path to build context> -zcvf context.tar.gz .
Then, copy over the compressed tar into your bucket. For example, we can copy over the compressed tar to a GCS bucket with gsutil:
gsutil cp context.tar.gz gs://<bucket name>
When running kaniko, use the --context
flag with the appropriate prefix to specify the location of your build context:
Source | Prefix | Example |
---|---|---|
Local Directory | dir://[path to a directory in the kaniko container] | dir:///workspace |
Local Tar Gz | tar://[path to a .tar.gz in the kaniko container] | tar://path/to/context.tar.gz |
Standard Input | tar://[stdin] | tar://stdin |
GCS Bucket | gs://[bucket name]/[path to .tar.gz] | gs://kaniko-bucket/path/to/context.tar.gz |
S3 Bucket | s3://[bucket name]/[path to .tar.gz] | s3://kaniko-bucket/path/to/context.tar.gz |
Azure Blob Storage | https://[account].[azureblobhostsuffix]/[container]/[path to .tar.gz] | https://myaccount.blob.core.windows.net/container/path/to/context.tar.gz |
Git Repository | git://[repository url][#reference][#commit-id] | git://github.com/acme/myproject.git#refs/heads/mybranch#<desired-commit-id> |
If you don't specify a prefix, kaniko will assume a local directory.
For example, to use a GCS bucket called kaniko-bucket
, you would pass in --context=gs://kaniko-bucket/path/to/context.tar.gz
.
If you are using Azure Blob Storage for context file, you will need to pass Azure Storage Account Access Key as an environment variable named AZURE_STORAGE_ACCESS_KEY
through Kubernetes Secrets
You can use Personal Access Tokens
for Build Contexts from Private Repositories from GitHub.
You can either pass this in as part of the git URL (e.g., git://TOKEN@github.com/acme/myproject.git#refs/heads/mybranch
)
or using the environment variable GIT_TOKEN
.
You can also pass GIT_USERNAME
and GIT_PASSWORD
(password being the token) if you want to be explicit about the username.
If running kaniko and using Standard Input build context, you will need to add the docker or kubernetes -i, --interactive
flag.
Once running, kaniko will then get the data from STDIN
and create the build context as a compressed tar.
It will then unpack the compressed tar of the build context before starting the image build.
If no data is piped during the interactive run, you will need to send the EOF signal by yourself by pressing Ctrl+D
.
Complete example of how to interactively run kaniko with .tar.gz
Standard Input data, using docker:
echo -e 'FROM alpine \nRUN echo "created from standard input"' > Dockerfile | tar -cf - Dockerfile | gzip -9 | docker run \
--interactive -v $(pwd):/workspace gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:latest \
--context tar://stdin \
--destination=<gcr.io/$project/$image:$tag>
Complete example of how to interactively run kaniko with .tar.gz
Standard Input data, using Kubernetes command line with a temporary container and completely dockerless:
echo -e 'FROM alpine \nRUN echo "created from standard input"' > Dockerfile | tar -cf - Dockerfile | gzip -9 | kubectl run kaniko \
--rm --stdin=true \
--image=gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:latest --restart=Never \
--overrides='{
"apiVersion": "v1",
"spec": {
"containers": [
{
"name": "kaniko",
"image": "gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:latest",
"stdin": true,
"stdinOnce": true,
"args": [
"--dockerfile=Dockerfile",
"--context=tar://stdin",
"--destination=gcr.io/my-repo/my-image"
],
"volumeMounts": [
{
"name": "cabundle",
"mountPath": "/kaniko/ssl/certs/"
},
{
"name": "docker-config",
"mountPath": "/kaniko/.docker/"
}
]
}
],
"volumes": [
{
"name": "cabundle",
"configMap": {
"name": "cabundle"
}
},
{
"name": "docker-config",
"configMap": {
"name": "docker-config"
}
}
]
}
}'
There are several different ways to deploy and run kaniko:
Requirements:
- Standard Kubernetes cluster (e.g. using GKE)
- Kubernetes Secret
- A build context
To run kaniko in a Kubernetes cluster, you will need a standard running Kubernetes cluster and a Kubernetes secret, which contains the auth required to push the final image.
To create a secret to authenticate to Google Cloud Registry, follow these steps:
- Create a service account in the Google Cloud Console project you want to push the final image to with
Storage Admin
permissions. - Download a JSON key for this service account
- Rename the key to
kaniko-secret.json
- To create the secret, run:
kubectl create secret generic kaniko-secret --from-file=<path to kaniko-secret.json>
Note: If using a GCS bucket in the same GCP project as a build context, this service account should now also have permissions to read from that bucket.
The Kubernetes Pod spec should look similar to this, with the args parameters filled in:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: kaniko
spec:
containers:
- name: kaniko
image: gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:latest
args:
- "--dockerfile=<path to Dockerfile within the build context>"
- "--context=gs://<GCS bucket>/<path to .tar.gz>"
- "--destination=<gcr.io/$PROJECT/$IMAGE:$TAG>"
volumeMounts:
- name: kaniko-secret
mountPath: /secret
env:
- name: GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS
value: /secret/kaniko-secret.json
restartPolicy: Never
volumes:
- name: kaniko-secret
secret:
secretName: kaniko-secret
This example pulls the build context from a GCS bucket. To use a local directory build context, you could consider using configMaps to mount in small build contexts.
Running kaniko in gVisor provides an additional security boundary.
You will need to add the --force
flag to run kaniko in gVisor, since currently there isn't a way to determine whether or not a container is running in gVisor.
docker run --runtime=runsc -v $(pwd):/workspace -v ~/.config:/root/.config \
gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:latest \
--dockerfile=<path to Dockerfile> --context=/workspace \
--destination=gcr.io/my-repo/my-image --force
We pass in --runtime=runsc
to use gVisor.
This example mounts the current directory to /workspace
for the build context and the ~/.config
directory for GCR credentials.
Requirements:
To run kaniko in GCB, add it to your build config as a build step:
steps:
- name: gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:latest
args: ["--dockerfile=<path to Dockerfile within the build context>",
"--context=dir://<path to build context>",
"--destination=<gcr.io/$PROJECT/$IMAGE:$TAG>"]
kaniko will build and push the final image in this build step.
Requirements:
We can run the kaniko executor image locally in a Docker daemon to build and push an image from a Dockerfile.
For example, when using gcloud and GCR you could run kaniko as follows:
docker run \
-v "$HOME"/.config/gcloud:/root/.config/gcloud \
-v /path/to/context:/workspace \
gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:latest \
--dockerfile /workspace/Dockerfile \
--destination "gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/$IMAGE_NAME:$TAG" \
--context dir:///workspace/
There is also a utility script run_in_docker.sh
that can be used as follows:
./run_in_docker.sh <path to Dockerfile> <path to build context> <destination of final image>
NOTE: run_in_docker.sh
expects a path to a
Dockerfile relative to the absolute path of the build context.
An example run, specifying the Dockerfile in the container directory /workspace
, the build
context in the local directory /home/user/kaniko-project
, and a Google Container Registry
as a remote image destination:
./run_in_docker.sh /workspace/Dockerfile /home/user/kaniko-project gcr.io/$PROJECT_ID/$TAG
kaniko can cache layers created by RUN
and Copy
(configured by flag --cache-copy-layers
) commands in a remote repository.
Before executing a command, kaniko checks the cache for the layer.
If it exists, kaniko will pull and extract the cached layer instead of executing the command.
If not, kaniko will execute the command and then push the newly created layer to the cache.
Note that kaniko cannot read layers from the cache after a cache miss: once a layer has not been found in the cache, all subsequent layers are built locally without consulting the cache.
Users can opt into caching by setting the --cache=true
flag.
A remote repository for storing cached layers can be provided via the --cache-repo
flag.
If this flag isn't provided, a cached repo will be inferred from the --destination
provided.
kaniko can cache images in a local directory that can be volume mounted into the kaniko pod.
To do so, the cache must first be populated, as it is read-only. We provide a kaniko cache warming
image at gcr.io/kaniko-project/warmer
:
docker run -v $(pwd):/workspace gcr.io/kaniko-project/warmer:latest --cache-dir=/workspace/cache --image=<image to cache> --image=<another image to cache>
--image
can be specified for any number of desired images.
This command will cache those images by digest in a local directory named cache
.
Once the cache is populated, caching is opted into with the same --cache=true
flag as above.
The location of the local cache is provided via the --cache-dir
flag, defaulting to /cache
as with the cache warmer.
See the examples
directory for how to use with kubernetes clusters and persistent cache volumes.
kaniko uses Docker credential helpers to push images to a registry.
kaniko comes with support for GCR, Docker config.json
and Amazon ECR, but configuring another credential helper should allow pushing to a different registry.
Get your docker registry user and password encoded in base64
echo -n USER:PASSWORD | base64
Create a config.json
file with your Docker registry url and the previous generated base64 string
Note: Please use v1 endpoint. See #1209 for more details
{
"auths": {
"https://index.docker.io/v1/": {
"auth": "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
}
}
}
Run kaniko with the config.json
inside /kaniko/.docker/config.json
docker run -ti --rm -v `pwd`:/workspace -v `pwd`/config.json:/kaniko/.docker/config.json:ro gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:latest --dockerfile=Dockerfile --destination=yourimagename
To create a credentials to authenticate to Google Cloud Registry, follow these steps:
- Create a service account or in the Google Cloud Console project you want to push the final image to with
Storage Admin
permissions. - Download a JSON key for this service account
- (optional) Rename the key to
kaniko-secret.json
, if you don't rename, you have to change the name used the command(in the volume part) - Run the container adding the path in GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS env var
docker run -ti --rm -e GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=/kaniko/config.json \
-v `pwd`:/workspace -v `pwd`/kaniko-secret.json:/kaniko/config.json:ro gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:latest \
--dockerfile=Dockerfile --destination=yourimagename
If you have enabled Workload Indentity on your GKE cluster then you can use the workload identity to push built images to GCR without adding a GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS
in your kaniko pod specification.
Learn more on how to enable and migrate existing apps to workload identity.
To authenticate using workload identity you need to run the kaniko pod using the Kubernetes Service Account (KSA) bound to Google Service Account (GSA) which as Storage.Admin
permissions to push images to Google Container registry.
Please follow the detailed steps here to create a Kubernetes Service Account, Google Service Account and create an IAM policy binding between the two to allow the Kubernetes Service account to act as the Google service account.
To grant the Google Service account the right permission to push to GCR, run the following GCR command
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding $PROJECT \
--member=serviceAccount:[gsa-name]@${PROJECT}.iam.gserviceaccount.com \
--role=roles/storage.objectAdmin
Please ensure, kaniko pod is running in the namespace and with Kubernetest Service Account.
The Amazon ECR credential helper is built into the kaniko executor image. To configure credentials, you will need to do the following:
- Update the
credsStore
section of config.json:
{ "credsStore": "ecr-login" }
You can mount in the new config as a configMap:
kubectl create configmap docker-config --from-file=<path to config.json>
-
Configure credentials
-
You can use instance roles when pushing to ECR from a EC2 instance or from EKS, by configuring the instance role permissions.
-
Or you can create a Kubernetes secret for your
~/.aws/credentials
file so that credentials can be accessed within the cluster. To create the secret, run:kubectl create secret generic aws-secret --from-file=<path to .aws/credentials>
-
The Kubernetes Pod spec should look similar to this, with the args parameters filled in.
Note that aws-secret
volume mount and volume are only needed when using AWS credentials from a secret, not when using instance roles.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
name: kaniko
spec:
containers:
- name: kaniko
image: gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:latest
args:
- "--dockerfile=<path to Dockerfile within the build context>"
- "--context=s3://<bucket name>/<path to .tar.gz>"
- "--destination=<aws_account_id.dkr.ecr.region.amazonaws.com/my-repository:my-tag>"
volumeMounts:
- name: docker-config
mountPath: /kaniko/.docker/
# when not using instance role
- name: aws-secret
mountPath: /root/.aws/
restartPolicy: Never
volumes:
- name: docker-config
configMap:
name: docker-config
# when not using instance role
- name: aws-secret
secret:
secretName: aws-secret
This flag allows you to pass in ARG values at build time, similarly to Docker. You can set it multiple times for multiple arguments.
Set this flag as --cache=true
to opt into caching with kaniko.
Set this flag to specify a local directory cache for base images. Defaults to /cache
.
This flag must be used in conjunction with the --cache=true
flag.
Set this flag to specify a remote repository that will be used to store cached layers.
If this flag is not provided, a cache repo will be inferred from the --destination
flag.
If --destination=gcr.io/kaniko-project/test
, then cached layers will be stored in gcr.io/kaniko-project/test/cache
.
This flag must be used in conjunction with the --cache=true
flag.
Cache timeout in hours. Defaults to two weeks.
Set this flag to clean the filesystem at the end of the build.
Set a sub path within the given --context
.
Its particularly useful when your context is, for example, a git repository, and you want to build one of its subfolders instead of the root folder.
Allows to build with another default platform than the host, similarly to docker build --platform xxx
the value has to be on the form --customPlatform=linux/arm
, with acceptable values listed here: GOOS/GOARCH
This is not virtualization and cannot help to build an architecture not natively supported by the build host. This is used to build i386 on an amd64 Host for example, or arm32 on an arm64 host.
Set this flag to specify a file in the container. This file will receive the digest of a built image. This can be used to automatically track the exact image built by kaniko.
For example, setting the flag to --digest-file=/dev/termination-log
will write the digest to that file, which is picked up by
Kubernetes automatically as the {{.state.terminated.message}}
of the container.
Path to the dockerfile to be built. (default "Dockerfile")
Force building outside of a container
Branch to clone if build context is a git repository (default branch=,single-branch=false,recurse-submodules=false)
Specify a file to save the image name w/ digest of the built image to.
Specify a file to save the image name w/ image tag and digest of the built image to.
Set this flag if you want to push images to a plain HTTP registry. It is supposed to be used for testing purposes only and should not be used in production!
Set this flag if you want to pull images from a plain HTTP registry. It is supposed to be used for testing purposes only and should not be used in production!
Set this flag to use plain HTTP requests when accessing a registry. It is supposed to be used for testing purposes only and should not be used in production! You can set it multiple times for multiple registries.
Set this flag as --label key=value
to set some metadata to the final image. This is equivalent as using the LABEL
within the Dockerfile.
Set this flag as --log-format=<text|color|json>
to set the log format. Defaults to color
.
Set this flag as --log-timestamp=<true|false>
to add timestamps to <text|color>
log format. Defaults to false
.
Set this flag if you only want to build the image, without pushing to a registry.
Set this flag to specify a directory in the container where the OCI image layout of a built image will be placed. This can be used to automatically track the exact image built by kaniko.
For example, to surface the image digest built in a
Tekton task,
this flag should be set to match the image resource outputImageDir
.
Note: Depending on the built image, the media type of the image manifest might be either
application/vnd.oci.image.manifest.v1+json
or application/vnd.docker.distribution.manifest.v2+json
.
Set this flag to provide a certificate for TLS communication with a given registry.
Expected format is my.registry.url=/path/to/the/certificate.cert
Set this flag if you want to use a registry mirror instead of the default index.docker.io
. You can use this flag more than once, if you want to set multiple mirrors. If an image is not found on the first mirror, Kaniko will try the next mirror(s), and at the end fallback on the default registry.
Expected format is mirror.gcr.io
for example.
Note that you can't specify a URL with scheme for this flag. Some valid options are:
mirror.gcr.io
127.0.0.1
192.168.0.1:5000
Set this flag to strip timestamps out of the built image and make it reproducible.
This flag takes a single snapshot of the filesystem at the end of the build, so only one layer will be appended to the base image.
Set this flag to skip TLS certificate validation when pushing to a registry. It is supposed to be used for testing purposes only and should not be used in production!
Set this flag to skip TLS certificate validation when pulling from a registry. It is supposed to be used for testing purposes only and should not be used in production!
Set this flag to skip TLS certificate validation when accessing a registry. It is supposed to be used for testing purposes only and should not be used in production! You can set it multiple times for multiple registries.
This flag builds only used stages if defined to true
.
Otherwise it builds by default all stages, even the unnecessaries ones until it reaches the target stage / end of Dockerfile
You can set the --snapshotMode=<full (default), redo, time>
flag to set how kaniko will snapshot the filesystem.
-
If
--snapshotMode=full
is set, the full file contents and metadata are considered when snapshotting. This is the least performant option, but also the most robust. -
If
--snapshotMode=redo
is set, the file mtime, size, mode, owner uid and gid will be considered when snapshotting. This may be up to 50% faster than "full", particularly if your project has a large number files. -
If
--snapshotMode=time
is set, only file mtime will be considered when snapshotting (see limitations related to mtime).
Set this flag as --tarPath=<path>
to save the image as a tarball at path.
You need to set --destination
as well (for example --destination=image
).
If you want to save the image as tarball only you also need to set --no-push
.
Set this flag to indicate which build stage is the target build stage.
Use the experimental run implementation for detecting changes without requiring file system snapshots. In some cases, this may improve build performance by 75%.
Set this flag as --verbosity=<panic|fatal|error|warn|info|debug|trace>
to set the logging level. Defaults to info
.
Ignore /var/run when taking image snapshot. Set it to false to preserve /var/run/* in destination image. (Default true).
The kaniko executor image is based on scratch and doesn't contain a shell.
We provide gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:debug
, a debug image which consists of the kaniko executor image along with a busybox shell to enter.
You can launch the debug image with a shell entrypoint:
docker run -it --entrypoint=/busybox/sh gcr.io/kaniko-project/executor:debug
kaniko by itself does not make it safe to run untrusted builds inside your cluster, or anywhere else.
kaniko relies on the security features of your container runtime to provide build security.
The minimum permissions kaniko needs inside your container are governed by a few things:
- The permissions required to unpack your base image into its container
- The permissions required to execute the RUN commands inside the container
If you have a minimal base image (SCRATCH or similar) that doesn't require permissions to unpack, and your Dockerfile doesn't execute any commands as the root user, you can run kaniko without root permissions. It should be noted that Docker runs as root by default, so you still require (in a sense) privileges to use kaniko.
You may be able to achieve the same default seccomp profile that Docker uses in your Pod by setting seccomp profiles with annotations on a PodSecurityPolicy to create or update security policies on your cluster.
If your builds are taking long, we recently added support to analyze kaniko function calls using Slow Jam To start profiling,
- Add an environment variable
STACKLOG_PATH
to your pod definition. - If you are using the kaniko
debug
image, you can copy the file in thepre-stop
container lifecyle hook.
Similar tools include:
All of these tools build container images with different approaches.
BuildKit (and img
) can perform as a non-root user from within a container but requires
seccomp and AppArmor to be disabled to create nested containers. kaniko
does not actually create nested containers, so it does not require seccomp and AppArmor
to be disabled.
orca-build
depends on runc
to build images from Dockerfiles, which can not
run inside a container (for similar reasons to img
above). kaniko
doesn't
use runc
so it doesn't require the use of kernel namespacing techniques.
However, orca-build
does not require Docker or any privileged daemon (so
builds can be done entirely without privilege).
umoci
works without any privileges, and also has no restrictions on the root
filesystem being extracted (though it requires additional handling if your
filesystem is sufficiently complicated). However, it has no Dockerfile
-like
build tooling (it's a slightly lower-level tool that can be used to build such
builders -- such as orca-build
).
Buildah
specializes in building OCI images. Buildah's commands replicate all
of the commands that are found in a Dockerfile. This allows building images
with and without Dockerfiles while not requiring any root privileges.
Buildah’s ultimate goal is to provide a lower-level coreutils interface to
build images. The flexibility of building images without Dockerfiles allows
for the integration of other scripting languages into the build process.
Buildah follows a simple fork-exec model and does not run as a daemon
but it is based on a comprehensive API in golang, which can be vendored
into other tools.
FTL
and Bazel
aim to achieve the fastest possible creation of Docker images
for a subset of images. These can be thought of as a special-case "fast path"
that can be used in conjunction with the support for general Dockerfiles kaniko
provides.
kaniko-users Google group
To Contribute to kaniko, see DEVELOPMENT.md and CONTRIBUTING.md.
When taking a snapshot, kaniko's hashing algorithms include (or in the case of
--snapshotMode=time
, only use) a file's
mtime
to determine
if the file has changed. Unfortunately, there is a delay between when changes to a
file are made and when the mtime
is updated. This means:
- With the time-only snapshot mode (
--snapshotMode=time
), kaniko may miss changes introduced byRUN
commands entirely. - With the default snapshot mode (
--snapshotMode=full
), whether or not kaniko will add a layer in the case where aRUN
command modifies a file but the contents do not change is theoretically non-deterministic. This does not affect the contents which will still be correct, but it does affect the number of layers.
Note that these issues are currently theoretical only. If you see this issue occur, please open an issue.