# GoogleContainerTools/distroless

🥑  Language focused docker images, minus the operating system.

Repository: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/distroless
Language: Starlark
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: docker, bazel
Last push: 2026-08-26T22:37:39+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 77/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3424, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 23037, forks 1434 (observed 2026-08-28T04:11:34.318031+00:00)

## What it is
Distroless is a set of minimal Docker base images published by Google that contain only an application's runtime dependencies, with no package managers, shells, or other OS tooling. Images are built with Bazel and published for multiple language runtimes (static, cc, java, python, nodejs, etc.) across Debian releases and many CPU architectures.

## Use cases
- build minimal docker images for my app
- reduce container image size and CVE surface
- run containers without a shell for hardening
- find a small base image for a Go or Java microservice
- create nonroot container images for kubernetes
- improve container scanner signal-to-noise
- build secure production container images

## When to choose
- you want the smallest, most hardened runtime image for a compiled or interpreted app
- you run containers in production and want to minimize attack surface and CVE noise
- you need multi-architecture, regularly updated Debian-based base images
- you build images with Bazel or can use static binaries

## When to avoid
- you need a shell, package manager, or debugging tools inside the running container (debug tags only partially help)
- your app depends on distro packages or glibc variants not covered by the provided images
- you need Alpine musl-based images or non-Debian distros

## Facets
- artifact type: infra-config
- maturity: active
- function: container-runtime, security, deployment, developer-tools
- domain: security, cloud-computing
- platform: cloud
- tags: container-images, distroless, minimal-images, bazel, debian, base-images, supply-chain-security, containers, devops, docker, linux, kubernetes

## Member repositories
- GoogleContainerTools/distroless (main) score 77

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:34.318031+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T16:56:49.253679+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/distroless (fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:34.318031+00:00, sha 302509355422)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.