🚀 Introducing Ultra Runners — Up to 3x faster GitHub Actions jobs
Blog
Kristen Foster-Marks
17 December 2024
Dialogues in DevEx: A Conversation with Annabelle Thomas Taylor
Platform Engineer Annabelle Thomas Taylor shares her journey from software developer to DevOps engineer, exploring the shared and distinct DevEx challenges in both roles, from reducing friction in CI/CD to fostering flow and resilience during high-stress incidents.
Kyle Galbraith
12 December 2024
Knowledge share: Insights from our container builds outages at the start of December
Things don't always go as planned. Here's a look at what happened the first week of December that took our container builds offline twice and what we're doing to prevent it in the future.
Kyle Tryon
11 December 2024
Observing serverless applications | AWS re:Invent 2024
Depot joined Cloudflare at AWS re:Invent 2024 to discuss the challenges of observing serverless applications and how high-cardinality metrics + Baselime can help.
Kristen Foster-Marks
5 December 2024
Dialogues in DevEx: A Conversation with Nic Pegg
Staff Engineer Nic Pegg shares his journey from navigating poor DevEx to spearheading initiatives that reduce friction, foster collaboration, and empower developers to thrive — both technically and emotionally.
Kyle Tryon
21 November 2024
What is a tar file?
What is a "tar" (tape archive) file? A deep dive into the history and inner workings of the tar file format to create better optimized archives.
Kyle Galbraith
18 November 2024
Now available: GitHub Actions Runners settings
We've rolled out two new settings you can now control for your organizations GitHub Actions runners to automatically authenticate with our Depot Registry and to default to using containerd inside of your workflows. Read on to learn more about these new settings.
Kristen Foster-Marks
14 November 2024
Developer Experience: Past, Present & Future
Our thoughts on the origins of DevEx, the current state of affairs, and where DevEx research and practice might be headed.
Kyle Tryon
5 November 2024
Pulling containers faster with eStargz
Optimizing containers to boot ultra-fast by lazily loading files with eStargz. Start your containers up to 76% faster.
Kristen Foster-Marks
30 October 2024
Introducing Developer Experience at Depot
We're excited to announce our new Developer Experience function, led by our Head of Developer Experience, Kristen Foster-Marks.
Kyle Tryon
22 October 2024
Building Images: Gzip vs Zstd
Docker images are downloaded as compressed layers and default to gzip compression. But is there a better option? We compare gzip and zstd compression methods to see which is best for building and pushing images.
Kyle Galbraith
16 October 2024
Introducing Ultra Runners — Up to 3x faster GitHub Actions jobs
Starting today, all Depot GitHub Actions runners are now Ultra Runners. We're excited to launch these new runners to make your GitHub Actions jobs up to 3x faster.
Kyle Galbraith
8 October 2024
Now available: macOS GitHub Actions runners
We're excited to announce that macOS GitHub Actions runners are now available on Depot! This means you can now run your macOS builds on Depot's infrastructure for faster builds at half the cost of GitHub-hosted runners.
Kyle Tryon
30 September 2024
Uncovering Disk I/O Bottlenecks in GitHub Actions
When your CI pipelines are slow, you can only optimize so much. Bottlenecks in CPU, Network, Memory, and Disk I/O can all contribute to slow CI pipelines. Let's take a look at how disk I/O can be a bottleneck in GitHub Actions.
Kyle Galbraith
24 September 2024
Docker buildx explained
In this article, we explain what Docker buildx is, how it’s different from docker build, the extra functionality it offers, and when you should use it.
Kyle Tryon
20 September 2024
Comparing GitHub Actions and Depot runners for 2x faster builds
We love GitHub Actions, but the default runners are slow and expensive. We benchmarked the performance of GitHub Actions runners against Depot runners and found that Depot runners are 2x faster and half the cost.
Kyle Galbraith
19 September 2024
GPUs now available for Depot GitHub Actions runners
Depot GitHub Actions runners with GPUs are now generally available for Depot Managed. This allows you to run the full data plane in your own AWS sub account with your own set of GPU resources.
Kyle Galbraith
16 September 2024
Tidy up with docker system prune
Drowning in Docker clutter? Learn how to use docker system prune to reclaim valuable disk space and remove all those old artifacts that are hogging your machine.
Kyle Galbraith
27 August 2024
Now available: Detailed Depot usage and GitHub Actions analytics
Our latest iteration on Depot organization usage introduces new stats and better visibility across your organization, including analytics for GitHub Actions and storage usage.
Kyle Galbraith
19 August 2024
Our favorite Docker tools
Go beyond the Docker CLI with some of the best tools in the container ecosystem. We share our favorite Docker tools that we use every day.
Kyle Tryon
6 August 2024
Deploy to Fly using a Depot builder
Using Fly.io's new Depot builder, we'll walk you through how to deploy a TypeScript service globally with speed.
Kyle Galbraith
1 August 2024
The complete guide to getting started with building Docker images
Dive into the world of Docker images, Dockerfiles, the docker build command, and much more. We'll cover the basics of Docker and how to get started with building Docker images.
Kyle Galbraith
31 July 2024
Fly builds, now with Depot
We're excited to announce that starting today you can build your Fly.io applications with Depot, directly from flyctl!
Kyle Galbraith
29 July 2024
Faster GitHub Actions with Depot
GitHub Actions has several pain points like slow CPUs, slow networks, flaky caching, and odd billing practices. We built Depot GitHub Actions runners to solve these problems and make your builds faster, more reliable, and more affordable.
Kyle Galbraith
25 July 2024
Docker multi-stage builds explained
Docker multi-stage builds enable parallelization and reduce image size. This article shows examples of multi-stage Dockerfiles with in-depth details.
Kyle Tryon
18 July 2024
What are Docker layers anyway?
To learn what a Docker layer really is, we'll dissect a Docker image and take a look inside. Deep dive into the layers of a Docker image and understand how they work.
Kyle Galbraith
5 July 2024
How to use Docker layer caching in GitHub Actions
To build a Docker image quickly, you should make use of Docker's layer cache. Here we show how to use the layer cache in GitHub Actions.
Kyle Galbraith
27 June 2024
Now available: Project build timeouts
You can now configure project level build timeouts for your container build projects and cancel builds from within Depot.
Kyle Galbraith
26 June 2024
Now available: GitHub Actions cache management
Now available for all organizations using Depot GitHub Actions Runners is the ability to view and delete cache entries from your GitHub Actions cache.
Kyle Galbraith
25 June 2024
How to speed up your Docker builds
Speeding up a Docker build requires optimizing the Dockerfile, maximizing the use of the cache, and taking advantage of multiple architectures.
Kyle Galbraith
20 June 2024
The best CI provider for fast Docker builds
A comparison of the best CI providers for fast Docker builds, and an introduction to Depot, which gives speed improvements for your CI Docker builds.
Kyle Galbraith
14 June 2024
How to clear Docker cache and free up space on your system
A breakdown of different Docker artifacts and build cache items that take up disk space and how to prune them individually or clear them all locally and in CI.
Chris Goller
30 May 2024
Building a custom Envoy discovery service for Depot
We built out own custom Envoy discovery service to quickly add and remove BuildKit instances when running outside of AWS. Here is the full guide on how we did it.
Jacob Gillespie
23 May 2024
Making EC2 boot time 8x faster
It's possible to cut EC2 boot time from 40 seconds to 5 seconds by combining several optimizations like root volume streaming, instance warm pools, and instance resizing.
Kyle Galbraith
20 May 2024
Real time visualization and monitoring of GitHub Actions Runners & Jobs
Now available inside Depot: a real-time visualization for monitoring your GitHub Actions Runners and Jobs leveraging our managed runners. Get a live view of all the jobs and runners running in your GitHub organization.
Kyle Galbraith
13 May 2024
We reverse-engineered the GitHub Actions cache so you don't have to
Here's how Depot reverse-engineered the GitHub Actions cache and built our own GitHub Actions Runners to achieve a 10x improvement in cache speed.
Kyle Galbraith
8 May 2024
How to use Depot to build your containers faster for Fly.io
Use Depot to build your Docker images and push them directly to a Fly registry for your app for even faster deployments.
Kyle Galbraith
30 April 2024
How to leverage GitHub Actions matrix strategy
Using a matrix strategy in GitHub Actions can help you parallelize your GitHub Actions jobs by definining a matrix configuration to run different variations of a job in parallel based on the matrix values.
Kyle Galbraith
25 April 2024
How to debug your Docker build context with Depot
Inside of Depot build insights you can now see what is in your Docker build context on every build. Knowing what is in your context can help you discover unexpected files your including in your build and final image.
Kyle Galbraith
19 April 2024
Best practice Dockerfile for speedy Rust builds
Rust builds in Docker tend to be slow. This article shows how to drastically speed them up using Docker layer caching and more advanced techniques like sccache.
Kyle Galbraith
12 April 2024
Building and Caching Docker Images in Bitbucket Pipelines
Bitbucket Pipelines can build Docker images, but not quickly. This post shows how to overcome the limitations of building Docker images in Bitbucket Pipelines.
Kyle Galbraith
6 April 2024
Running GitHub Actions jobs in a container built with Depot
Dive into how to build a customer container image with Depot and run a GitHub Actions job in it in the same workflow. Combine the power of accelerated Docker image builds, ephemeral registry, and Depot runners to optimize your workflows.
Kyle Galbraith
14 March 2024
Now available: Connect Cycle.io to Depot for faster container image builds
We're excited to share that you can now connect your Depot projects to Cycle.io for faster Docker image builds in less than 60 seconds. Here is how to get started.
Kyle Galbraith
13 March 2024
Introducing Depot managed GitHub Actions Runners
We're excited to introduce our third product, GitHub Actions Runners accelerated by Depot. All of the speed and performance from Depot-backed Docker image builds, now for your GitHub Actions jobs.
Kyle Galbraith
12 March 2024
Depot is now SOC 2 compliant
We are happy to reveal that Depot is now SOC 2 compliant. This is a significant milestone for us, so we thought we would share some more details and what it means for you.
Kyle Galbraith
11 March 2024
Now available: Depot ephemeral registry for bake
We're excited to announce that we've now made Depot ephemeral registries available to depot bake commands so that you can save built images for multiple targets for later use in your CI workflows, to share with your team, or to push to remote registries.
Kyle Galbraith
4 March 2024
Depot Build API: build Docker images as a service
This article walks you through how to use Depot's API within your own code to set up projects and run your Docker builds as a service on Depot's infrastructure.
Kyle Galbraith
29 February 2024
Now available: Dagger Functions for Depot
We're excited to announce that we've released a set of Dagger Functions for Depot. You can use them to offload any build or bake operation to Depot and use the built image in your own Dagger code via our ephemeral registry.
Kyle Galbraith
19 February 2024
Buildx bake deep dive: Bake all your images with one command
This article explains how BuildKit works in depth, why it's faster than Docker's previous build engine, and what it looks like under the hood.
Kyle Galbraith
1 February 2024
BuildKit in depth: Docker's build engine explained
This article explains how BuildKit works in depth, why it's faster than Docker's previous build engine, and what it looks like under the hood.
Kyle Galbraith
18 January 2024
How Depot speeds up Docker builds
We go behind the scenes into Depot's architecture to explore exactly how it delivers fast, secure, multi-platform Docker builds locally and in CI.
Jacob Gillespie
15 January 2024
Building containers from scratch: Layers
Exploring how OCI images represent layers, how layers can modify and delete files from previous layers, and how container runtimes combine layers into a single filesystem.
Kyle Galbraith
8 January 2024
Build Docker images faster using build cache
Knowing how to optimize your Docker image builds to leverage the build cache as often as possible is critical to making your builds fast. We'll show you how the layer cache works and how to use the cache efficiently, so you can get the most out of your builds.
Kyle Galbraith
6 December 2023
Now available: Depot ephemeral registries
We're excited to release Depot ephemeral registries that allow you to save built images for later use in your CI workflows, to share with your team, or to push to remote registries.
Kyle Galbraith
1 December 2023
Faster Docker image builds in AWS CodeBuild
A deep dive into building Docker images in AWS CodeBuild and how you can build a Docker in CodeBuild with the Lambda compute type via Depot.
Kyle Galbraith
28 November 2023
Building Docker Images in GitLab CI with Depot
Building Docker images in GitLab CI comes with tradeoffs between security, complexity, and performance.
Kyle Galbraith
17 November 2023
How to use Depot to build Docker images in your monorepo
A detailed guide with suggestions on how to leverage Depot in your monorepo workflows so that you get effective caching and fast builds.
Kyle Galbraith
6 November 2023
How to optimize Docker image builds for Depot
Optimizing for building Docker images in the cloud can help reduce image and build context size so that your builds can leverage the full power of Depot builders.
Kyle Galbraith
27 October 2023
How to build multi-platform Docker images in GitHub Actions
Building multi-platform, also known as multi-architecture, Docker images in GitHub Actions is becoming a necessity. See how to build them in GitHub Actions.
Kyle Galbraith
20 October 2023
Depot is now available in the AWS Marketplace
Depot is now available in the AWS Marketplace for customers looking to purchase an Enterprise plan via AWS.
Jacob Gillespie
20 October 2023
Introducing the Dockerfile Explorer
We're excited to release the Dockerfile Explorer, a tool for introspecting the LLB output of BuildKit's Dockerfile parser.
Jacob Gillespie
19 October 2023
Reducing time-to-start
We're reducing time-to-start by optimizing EC2 instance boot time, infrastructure provisioning, and improving UI and CLI flows to reduce unnecessary steps.
Kyle Galbraith
18 October 2023
Track your Depot usage across your organization
Track your monthly Depot usage across your entire organization, and per-project, with stats for build time, error rate, cache performance, and more.
Kyle Galbraith
17 October 2023
Easily generate SBOMs for every build with Depot
You can now generate a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) for every build with Depot and access it directly from our new build Attestations view.
Kyle Galbraith
16 October 2023
Depot Build Insights: Better visibility into your builds
We're very excited to release our brand new build insights feature, which gives you better visibility into your builds and helps you debug issues faster.
Kyle Galbraith
5 October 2023
Faster Docker builds for Arm without emulation
Building Docker Arm images today usually means using emulation. But, it's slow and inefficient. See how to build multi-architecture images with zero emulation.
Kyle Galbraith
15 September 2023
Top 10 common Dockerfile linting issues
We've added the ability to lint Dockerfiles on demand in Depot. This post covers the top 10 most common Dockerfile linting issues we've seen flowing through Depot.
Kyle Galbraith
7 September 2023
Now available: CircleCI OIDC for Depot builds
In addition to our existing GitHub Actions and Buildkite OIDC integrations via trust relationships, we now support CircleCI OIDC for Depot builds as well.
Kyle Galbraith
31 August 2023
Now available: Usage caps
Organization owners can now configure usage caps to limit the total number of build minutes their team can use in a given month.
Kyle Galbraith
29 August 2023
Now available: Use Docker Compose with Depot
We're excited to announce that with our new configure-docker command, you can now use Depot to build the images in your Docker Compose file automatically without changing a single line of code.
Kyle Galbraith
10 August 2023
Depot is now a member of the CNCF
We're excited to announce that Depot has joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as a silver member to help more folks learn about and use cloud native technologies like Depot.
David Schmitt
31 July 2023
Overmind uses Depot to build Dev Containers 10x faster
Overmind leverages Dev Containers to manage and roll out a standard set of development tools and configurations to their engineering team. They switched to Depot to build their multi-platform Dev Container images 10x faster.
Kyle Galbraith
27 July 2023
Now available: Configure Docker to run builds with Depot by default
We're excited to bring a new feature to the
depot CLI that allows you to configure docker build to use Depot for all image builds by default.
Kyle Galbraith
20 July 2023
A recap of Depot Drop Week #01
Our first Depot Drop Week is over! We announced three new features that are going to make builds even faster, easier to embed AI models into a build, and allow public forks to leverage the power of Depot builders.
Kyle Galbraith
19 July 2023
Run Depot builds on forks of open-source projects with GitHub Actions
Use ephemeral Depot builders to build and test Docker images on pull requests from forks of your open-source repositories with our new authentication mechanism for public forks.
Kyle Galbraith
18 July 2023
Depot AI: A free open-source Docker registry for public AI models
A free open-source Docker registry for public AI models. Add any top 100 model on Hugging Face to your Dockerfile with a single
COPY statement.
Kyle Galbraith
17 July 2023
Depot Cache v2: Faster builds and new features
We're excited to announce our new cache storage architecture that makes builds even faster, eliminates project constraints, and allows you to choose the cache size that makes sense for your project.
Kyle Galbraith
28 June 2023
How to build an image without the Docker cache
Using the Docker build cache speeds up builds by reusing layers from previous builds. But sometimes you want to build an image without the cache. Here's how.
Kyle Galbraith
21 June 2023
Now available: Depot API
We're excited to bring our public API out of beta and make it generally available to all Depot customers. Learn more about what you can do with our new API and how to get started.
Ruben Fiszel
12 June 2023
Windmill.dev builds multi-platform Docker images faster with Depot
Windmill.dev switched to Depot for their native Intel & Arm Docker image builds, making them 13x faster inside of GitHub Actions.
Kyle Galbraith
9 June 2023
Building Docker Images in CircleCI with Depot
See how you can accelerate your Docker image builds in CircleCI with Depot. Saving you time and credits with faster builds for native Intel & Arm images.
Jacob Gillespie
6 June 2023
New build summary link and a refreshed UI
We're added a build summary link for every build and refreshed the build details UI to make it easier to see what's going on with your builds at a glance.
Kyle Galbraith
31 May 2023
Lint a Dockerfile on every build
We're excited to announce that you can now lint your Dockerfile on every build with Depot! No more configuring a separate Dockerfile linter outside or before your build in CI.
Kyle Galbraith
30 May 2023
The fundamentals of building a Docker image
There are four fundamentals to building a Docker image quickly with
docker build. From the moment we create a Dockerfile, we should be thinking about the fundamentals of building a Docker image as fast as possible.
Kyle Galbraith
22 May 2023
Depot documentation is now open source
All of our documentation is now open source so that you can contribute to it if you'd like and so that we can improve on it in public.
Kyle Galbraith
17 May 2023
Accelerated local builds, with instant shared cache
Today we're announcing local Docker image builds with the speed of Depot's cloud builders and instant cache sharing across your entire team.
Jacob Gillespie
24 April 2023
Kysely dialect for PlanetScale
A Kysely dialect for PlanetScale that allows you to write type-safe and autocompletion-friendly SQL queries.
Kyle Galbraith
19 April 2023
How to reduce your Docker image size
Leverage
.dockerignore, smaller base images, and multi-stage builds to drastically reduce the size of your Docker images.
Kyle Galbraith
31 March 2023
Faster image builds from Buildkite pipelines with Depot
We've launched a new integration that allows you to build container images faster with Depot directly from your existing Buildkite pipelines.
Kyle Galbraith
17 March 2023
Now available: Cache statistics
See how much of your builds are cached and how much time that saves you and your team. In addition, monitor how much provisioned cache you are using for each build architecture.
Kyle Galbraith
24 February 2023
Turbo Builders are now available
Fast image builds just got even faster with the introduction of bigger builder machines that have 4x the compute power.
Kyle Galbraith
30 January 2023
Build all of your Docker images concurrently from a file with bake
With CLI version 1.5.0,
buildx bake comes to Depot via the depot bake command. Build multiple Docker images concurrently from an HCL, JSON, or Docker Compose file.
Kyle Galbraith
15 December 2022
How to use BuildKit cache mounts in CI providers
BuildKit cache mounts provide a more fine-grained cache that allows you to leverage pre-computed work even when the Docker layer cache invalidates.
Kyle Galbraith
12 December 2022
New feature: Select the region for your Depot projects
Building your Docker images just got even faster with the ability to launch Depot builders in the region closest to your registries.
Kyle Galbraith
18 November 2022
Faster Docker image builds in Cloud Build with layer caching
The easiest way to get faster Docker image builds inside of Google Cloud Build is to make use of the layer cache as frequently as possible. But options available today in Cloud Build can often negate the advantages of layer caching.
Kyle Galbraith
11 November 2022
Now available: A Depot plugin for asdf
If you use the asdf version manager, you can now add our Depot CLI as a plugin to manage all of your versions in one place.
Kyle Galbraith
30 October 2022
New feature: Login with Google and Microsoft
We made it even easier to sign up and try out Depot by adding support for logging in with Google and Microsoft accounts.
Kyle Galbraith
18 August 2022
Introducing self-hosted Depot builders
Self-hosted Depot builders are here! Launch builders in your own AWS accounts on a per-project basis and connect directly to them without passing through any Depot proxy.
Kyle Galbraith
22 July 2022
How to reduce the size of a Docker image using dive
Reducing the overall image size is key to building and launching Docker images as quickly as possible. The smaller the image size, the less network bandwidth we have to consume to build and launch it.
Kyle Galbraith
21 June 2022
New feature: project tokens
You can now authenticate to Depot with a project-specific API token, for fine-grained access control over your Docker builds.
Jacob Gillespie
7 June 2022
Fast Dockerfiles: theory and practice
Writing a Dockerfile that builds quickly involves understanding the Docker layer cache and working with it to maximize the number of cache hits between builds.
Kyle Galbraith
26 May 2022
How to build Arm and multi-architecture containers today
Building Arm and multi-architecture containers today is challenging. In this post, we explore the current options and how Depot addresses each challenge.
Kyle Galbraith
12 May 2022
Introducing Depot — A faster way to build Docker images
Depot is a new container build service with blazing fast compute and persistent caching, for both Intel and Arm containers.
Your builds have never been this quick.
Start building