Cache Manifest: duplicate entries in a manifest ? Is a sha an identifier ?

[azr]

Hello there, I'm currently trying to deeply understand what's in a cache manifest and I have a bunch of questions, feel free to just redirect me to a blog post or something, I couldn't find any that would answer these.

1/ In some builds a cache manifest can have more than one layer with the same digest, but I see that the code treats those as a single, same thing; for example in here :

buildkit/cache/remotecache/import.go

Lines 76 to 79 in 36c5550

	allLayers[m.Digest] = v1.DescriptorProviderPair{
	Descriptor: m,
	Provider: ci.provider,
	}

Here are some questions:

• Can a layer be identified by its blob (digest) ? Or should it rather be identified by its full path eg: $parent_digests + $digest ?
• what gives a digest ?
• if two digests are identical, can we only assume that the operation was the same ?
• Could duplicate digests cause some issues down the line ?
• Would it be a correct thing to sort of rewrite a manifest and merge the duplicate entries together ? ( it feels like no because then we would end up with an incorrect result and sometimes the result would be an invalid loopey dag )

2/ Same paragraph and same questions but for cache records instead of layers. A cache manifest can have more than one records with a similar digest.

3/ cacheManager.Query

• What will a cacheManager.Query actually lookup ? A digest ? but if the digest can be duplicate, won't that operation be incorrect then ? Or will it rather ask for the full path leading there ?

• I also saw that upon loading a cache manifest, the loaded digests are randomized here :

buildkit/cache/remotecache/v1/cachestorage.go

Lines 47 to 52 in 36c5550

	var id string
	if len(it.links) == 0 {
	id = it.dgst.String()
	} else {
	id = identity.NewID()
	}

When the cache item has links. But, would it be possible to rename things before saving the manifest ? So as to have each entry be a unique one ?

Thanks :)

[tonistiigi]

Start from https://github.com/moby/buildkit/blob/master/cache/remotecache/v1/doc.go if you haven't already.

Duplicate digests may appear but duplicate chains (meaning elements where all the other properties are same as well) should not. Unfortunately, I think I've seen some (unverified) reports of instances with duplictes so it is possible there is a bug somewhere. In that case feel free to tackle it or if you can put together a reproducer that creates duplicates then make sure to post it.

Layer digest is not a cache digest. Chains of cache digests point to some layer chain.

Would it be a correct thing to sort of rewrite a manifest and merge the duplicate entries together ?

This should already happen. For example look at CacheChains.normalize()

I also saw that upon loading a cache manifest, the loaded digests are randomized here :

This is an internal representation for testing uniqueness. These IDs do not end up in JSON manifest.

[azr]

Hey @tonistiigi, thanks for all these, and sorry for not replying sooner, the notification somehow slipped through, although I was looking forward 👀.

I managed to have a chain that had a part repeating itself, but it repeated only once (not infinitely), and it made sense then looking at the Dockerfile, I think. 🤔 Nothing weird since.

I did build a thing that would generate a dot file from a cache Manifest, to get a visual graph of the manifest, which helped a lot + a few other things that helped.

I managed to answer my questions, to build the thing I wanted to build, a global s3 cache as described in here #4295 would you be interested in me opening a PR with it ? Would you also be interested in seeing the dot generator ?

Thanks !

[tonistiigi]

would you be interested in me opening a PR with it ? Would you also be interested in seeing the dot generator ?

You can open a PR and we can discuss there. Make it a draft if you are not sure what direction to take it. For "dot generator" as well I need to see more details, like can it accept the name of cache image or what is the interface. Generally, we are of course interested in more debugging tools.

[jedevc]

Would you also be interested in seeing the dot generator ?

100%. I've been doing some not very fun cache debugging recently, and any kind of tooling around this would be great.

Even if you don't have the time to do a PR right now, if you have anything at all that's public, I'd potentially be happy to collaborate and help upstream it?

[azr]

I have pretty handy tooling around here, let me quickly PR it.

[azr]

Feel free to use #4470