Hello here, Together with Aritra we are looking into adding a few more things to our images (golang tool chain for CI image), also Shahar is experimenting with Rust tool chain and I also recently realized (by some of the issues we had) that 'Docker Official Python Image' that is part of 'Official Program' [1] is not as 'Official' as I thought so we discuss about changing the base of our images (first CI and then when we see it works fine - PROD)
Currently we are using the 'Official' image - but after some issues and discussions with people at PyCon and FOSS Backstage (I had a chance to talk to Python maintainers and even had a few beers with them) - it turned out that the official Python Image' is maintained by 'a community's which really is a few pretty random people - and that explains for example why we have sometimes unpacked security vulnerabilities in setuptools etc. - because they made some compatibility choices and decisions that do not allow them to upgrade easily, also they had some delays in releasing updated Python versions. And Docker does not **really** do much vetting there. So I think it would be good to switch how we build the base for our images. And following the experience of `uv python` [2] - it seems that maybe using "python-standalone" [3] project is a good alternative. It's managed by Astral now (so yes - another dependency on them), but what you have with it you have practically 100% complete Python interpreter installed in seconds. We could continue using debian-slim as a "base, base image" - and install python using "python-standalone". There are a few incompatibilities [4] of the distributions of Python, but there are very few and mostly related to some obscure systems (compatibilities with terminal in REPL, and gtk / UI integration that is anyhow not really working in "standard" Python distributions). I would love to hear what you think - happy to get any feedback/ insights, suggestions and answer additional questions, provide some links to past "troubles" we had with Python "Official" images etc. J. [1] Official Python Images - https://hub.docker.com/_/python [2] UV Python installation - https://docs.astral.sh/uv/guides/install-python/ [3] Python Standalone project - https://github.com/astral-sh/python-build-standalone [4] Python Standalone incompatibilities - https://gregoryszorc.com/docs/python-build-standalone/main/quirks.html
