Re: Hosting first-party kernel.org container images

[Miguel Ojeda <miguel.ojeda.sandonis@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 3:44 PM Guillaume Tucker <gtucker@gtucker.io> wrote:
>
> Nathan, Nicolas, Miguel - what are your thoughts on this?

I agree with Nathan that `Containerfile`s on git.kernel.org sounds good.

While many kernel developers may not use them (mostly because everyone
has their own setup already), if we had a set of "base" images that
are maintained by someone trusted (including publishing them in the
usual registries for easy use), then I think a bunch of us would
actually use them for CI and possibly other tasks; just like some of
us already use the kernel.org toolchains "manually" anyway etc.

It could serve as an entry point to discover the different toolchains
and software offered by kernel.org, i.e. not just the GCC and LLVM and
LLVM+Rust toolchains, but also perhaps `b4` pre-installed and so on.
Even things like `tc-build` or the latest and greatest set of AI
context text files could be considered too.

It could also perhaps simplify a tiny bit giving quick reproducers
compared to giving the instructions for a distro base image + extra
things to install. It could also be a good thing to give newcomers
(i.e. how to set up all the development environment is a common
question) and LLMs.

I mean, all this is nothing new of course, but sometimes trust and
convenience go a long way.

I hope that helps!

Cheers,
Miguel