Google has launched broad support across Google Cloud for buildpacks—an open-source technology designed to create secure, production-ready container images from source code and without a Dockerfile.

Based on the CNCF buildpacks v3 specification, these open-source buildpacks are claimed to produce container images that follow best practices. They are suitable for running on all of Google’s container platforms: Cloud Run (fully managed), Anthos, and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

Buildpacks are distributed and executed in OCI images called builders. Each builder can have one or more buildpacks. The builder of the Google Cloud buildpacks that is being released is available here.

Google Cloud’s buildpacks are “optimized for security, speed, and reusability”. They allow you to build both apps and functions into container images. When building a function, they package it using Google Cloud’s open-source Functions Framework.

Google Cloud buildpacks use a managed base Ubuntu 18.04 base image that is regularly scanned for security vulnerabilities; any detected vulnerabilities are automatically patched.