[Proposal] Build and publish container images for reference plugins

[marquiz]

The reference plugins are useful in testing and development and also used in some real-world deployments. However, currently these reference plugins are not built and published as container images, which is cumbersome for users who want to try them out quickly or run them more permanently in containerized environments.

I propose that we start to publish container images of the reference plugins in ghcr.io. (e.g., ghcr.io/containerd/nri/plugins/). We could take a piecemeal approach of enabling only selected plugins.

Benefits would include easier adoption and testing of the reference plugins and promoting consistent builds across environments.

Steps/tasks:

1. Write docker files to the (selected) plugins
2. CI Integration
   • GitHub workflows for building and pushing images
   • publish "unstable" images from the main branch
   • publish tagged images from releases
3. Documentation
   • update README to reference the available container images)
   • possibly also example yaml(s)/snippet(s) for deployment

[marquiz]

@klihub @mikebrow @chrishenzie @samuelkarp

[klihub]

@marquiz Sounds like a good idea to me.

[mikebrow]

Nod .. have been wanting to use container images or artifacts for release version packaging of the CNI plugins for a long time now.. just never got around to it. Heck yes will be nice to package up, for node deployment and testing, various NRI reference plugins from containerd/nri/plugins and containers/nri-plugins ... multi-arch of course

[chrishenzie]

+1, this will help reduce the barrier to entry for running these plugins

[marquiz]

Thanks for quick comments. No rejection so far, I can start working on this

[marquiz]

See #191

[fmuyassarov]

@marquiz I think the kustomize addition was a follow up to this ?
What are your thoughts on Helm charts now that there are container images available for reference plugins?

[marquiz]

I think the kustomize addition was a follow up to this ?

Yes.

What are your thoughts on Helm charts now that there are container images available for reference plugins?

I don't have strong feelings. I picked kustomize as a minimalistic no-fuzz-minimal-documentation-and-maintenance solution for providing -sample- deployment for the plugins.

Why not Helm charts if we have a committed maintainer (™️) for those :)

[marquiz]

Closing this issue as completed