GoogleContainerTools/distroless

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

23135 stars · 1439 forks observed · 2026-10-15

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-10-12, confidence 0.97

Distroless provides a collection of language‑focused Docker base images that contain only the application and its runtime dependencies. They omit package managers, shells, and other OS components to create minimal, secure containers.

Use cases

• build ultra‑small Docker images for Go, Java, Python, etc.
• run production containers with reduced attack surface
• improve CVE scanning signal by removing unnecessary OS packages
• create containers that start faster due to minimal footprint
• use as base images for CI/CD pipelines that require reproducible builds

When to choose

• You need the smallest possible container image for your language runtime.
• Security and compliance require minimal binaries in the runtime environment.
• Your application does not need a shell or package manager inside the container.

When to avoid

• You need to install additional packages at runtime or during debugging.
• Your workflow relies on interactive shell access inside the container.
• You require a full OS environment for complex system utilities.

Facets

application · maturity active

container-runtime deployment cloud-computing docker cloud distroless minimal security small-images no-shell no-package-manager devops containers linux docker

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="GoogleContainerTools/distroless")