Pyoci – Publish and Install Private Python Packages Using Oci/docker Registries

Posted3 months agoActive3 months ago

robinhoodexe

29 points

13 comments

github.comTechstory

calmpositive

Debate

20/100

Python PackagingOci/docker RegistriesDevops Tools

Key topics

Python Packaging

Oci/docker Registries

Devops Tools

PyOCI is a tool that allows publishing and installing private Python packages using OCI/Docker registries, sparking discussion on its design and potential alternatives.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Moderate engagement

First comment

Peak period

Day 4

Avg / period

3.3

Comment distribution13 data points

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Based on 13 loaded comments

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01Story posted
Sep 29, 2025 at 7:37 AM EDT
3 months ago
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02First comment
Oct 3, 2025 at 2:19 AM EDT
4d after posting
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03Peak activity
8 comments in Day 4
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04Latest activity
Oct 9, 2025 at 10:36 AM EDT
3 months ago
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Discussion (13 comments)

Showing 13 comments

tuananh

3 months ago

1 reply

can we agree to use OCI for everything :D

deknos

3 months ago

3 replies

as long as we can convert the OCI to an bootable VM image, i am fine with that. But i also think, there's an size limit

tetha

3 months ago

1 reply

Oh those size limits are pushed plenty by AI images, no worries. I recently had a good laugh when I found a docker image that was 2 - 3 times as big as the OS partition of a lot of our smaller servers.

And our OS image build order would reuse layers better than those.

bravetraveler

3 months ago

1 reply

No doubt, I've regularly encountered ~2TB container images with enough layers to make one weep. SISO, slop in/slop out (sorry).

grepfru_it

3 months ago

1 reply

Time to find out if one can make a dockerbomb image >:-)

bravetraveler

3 months ago

I believe in you, 'fallocate' can be put into entrypoint :P This way the size is a surprise, not constant

yjftsjthsd-h

3 months ago

There are still growing pains, but https://github.com/osbuild/bootc-image-builder exists and is likely to become exactly that in the general case (as it already is for the redhat family).

tuananh

3 months ago

i think it's already been done with bootable containers.

redhat has recently GA bootable container as well.

yjftsjthsd-h

3 months ago

1 reply

Would be nice to see at least a high-level overview of how it works under the hood. Is it doing anything interesting with reusable layers? Actually, thinking further that might be a moot point; I feel like running as a remote proxy loses some fun optimization chances. I could imagine a world where you install a package from the host's pip/uv, and then add it to a container image, and both of those are actually the same thing on disk. (Granted, that's likely harder to implement)

allexv

3 months ago

1 reply

Hi, I included a few details here: https://github.com/AllexVeldman/pyoci/blob/main/docs/design.... which I recognise does not contain much.

It's basically a single layer image with a multi-platform image index per tag(version) on top.

No smarts added, performance wise it's probably worse than running your own dedicated pypi index or any purpose-built system, my main goal is a private index for if you don't have access to one already.

yjftsjthsd-h

3 months ago

(Thanks for replying!)

That's fair. I'm used to thinking of OCI images as being a particular optimization (there's a reason we don't ship containers around ass rootfs tarballs), but for your usecase it may well be a premature/pointless optimization.

globular-toast

3 months ago

Or you could use GitLab which has support for Python packages without a proxy.

allexv

3 months ago

Thank you for posting my project here! Only noticed it just now due to the uptick in starts on github :)

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ID: 45412472Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 2:52:47 PM

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