Comment by abelanger
1 day ago
This is seriously cool - it's exactly the DX and API I've been waiting for from sandboxed execution providers.
I'd love to be able to configure the base image/VM in a way that doesn't bundle coding tools or anything else I don't need, and comes with some other binaries installed (I'm more interested in using this as an API for a sandbox use-case I have). Is there a way to do this at the moment / is this on the roadmap?
Another option would be configuring the sprite via checkpoint and then cloning the checkpoint from a base sprite, but I don't see this option anywhere either.
This is on the roadmap. The open question right now is if we can just do "fork from checkpoint" for customized template environments, or if we need all the docker infrastructure.
If the fat bundled environment harmful for you, or just extra stuff you don't care about?
Not harmful for now - "fork from checkpoint" would be perfectly fine for me at the moment. The main issue (as flagged in the post) is that setting up additional tooling can take a while!
In the longer term, docker is nice from a reproducibility + CI perspective, and a docker build is already something can easily work with and track in my system.
One thing I've heard but not verified with other sandboxed execution providers is that startup times for custom images can be quite slow, so it could be a potential differentiator given Fly's existing infra.
Yes! It would be kinda cool to have the ability to docker-deploy (think the fly method even -- just to get your sprite on its feet the way YOU want it) a base sprite image and then just go from there in the normal sprite way from then on.