

The main advantage of using S2I for building reproducible container images is the ease of use for developers. As a builder image author, you must understand two basic concepts in order for your images to provide the best possible S2I performance: the build process and S2I scripts.

Build Process


  • sources

  • S2I scripts

  • builder image

During the build process, S2I must place sources and scripts inside the builder image. To do so, S2I creates a tar file that contains the sources and scripts, then streams that file into the builder image. Before executing the assemble script, S2I untars that file and places its contents into the location specified by the io.openshift.s2i.destination label from the builder image, with the default location being the /tmp directory.

For this process to happen, your image must supply the tar archiving utility (the tar command available in $PATH) and the command line interpreter (the /bin/sh command); this allows your image to use the fastest possible build path. If the tar or /bin/sh command is not available, the s2i build process is forced to automatically perform an additional container build to put both the sources and the scripts inside the image, and only then run the usual build.

See the following diagram for the basic S2I build workflow:

S2I workflow
Figure 1. Build Workflow
  • Run build’s responsibility is to untar the sources, scripts and artifacts (if such exist) and invoke the assemble script. If this is the second run (after catching tar or /bin/sh not found error) it is responsible only for invoking assemble script, since both scripts and sources are already there.

S2I Scripts


  1. A script specified in the BuildConfig


  3. A script found at the default image URL (io.openshift.s2i.scripts-url label)

Both the io.openshift.s2i.scripts-url label specified in the image and the script specified in a BuildConfig can take one of the following forms:

  • image:///path_to_scripts_dir - absolute path inside the image to a directory where the S2I scripts are located

  • file:///path_to_scripts_dir - relative or absolute path to a directory on the host where the S2I scripts are located

  • http(s)://path_to_scripts_dir - URL to a directory where the S2I scripts are located

Table 1. S2I Scripts
Script Description

assemble (required)

The assemble script builds the application artifacts from a source and places them into appropriate directories inside the image. The workflow for this script is:

  1. Restore build artifacts. If you want to support incremental builds, make sure to define save-artifacts as well (optional).

  2. Place the application source in the desired location.

  3. Build the application artifacts.


run (required)

The run script executes your application.

save-artifacts (optional)

The save-artifacts script gathers all dependencies that can speed up the build processes that follow. For example:

  • For Ruby, gems installed by Bundler.

  • For Java, .m2 contents.


usage (optional)


test/run (optional)

The test/run script allows you to create a simple process to check if the image is working correctly. The proposed flow of that process is:

  1. Build the image.

  2. Run the image to verify the usage script.

  3. Run s2i build to verify the assemble script.

  4. Run s2i build again to verify the save-artifacts and assemble scripts save and restore artifacts functionality. (optional)


See the Testing S2I Images topic for more information.

The suggested location to put the test application built by your test/run script is the test/test-app directory in your image repository. See the S2I documentation for more information.

Example S2I Scripts

The following examples are written in Bash and it is assumed all tar contents are unpacked into the /tmp/s2i directory.
Example 1. assemble script:

# restore build artifacts

# move the application source
mv /tmp/s2i/src $HOME/src

# build application artifacts
pushd ${HOME}
make all

# install the artifacts
make install
Example 2. run script:

# run the application
Example 3. save-artifacts script:

pushd ${HOME}
if [ -d deps ]; then
    # all deps contents to tar stream
    tar cf - deps
Example 4. usage script:

# inform the user how to use the image
cat <<EOF

Using Images with ONBUILD Instructions

The ONBUILD instructions can be found in many official container images. For example:

  • Ruby

  • Node.js

  • Python

See the Docker documentation for more information on ONBUILD.

Upon startup, S2I detects whether the builder image contains sh and tar binaries which are necessary for the S2I process to inject build inputs. If the builder image does not contain these prerequisites, it will attempt to instead perform a container build to layer the inputs. If the builder image includes ONBUILD instructions, S2I will instead fail the build because the ONBUILD instructions would be executed during the layering process, and that equates to performing a generic container build which is less secure than an S2I build and requires explicit permissions.

Therefore you should ensure that your S2I builder image either does not contain ONBUILD instructions, or ensure that it has the necessary sh and tar binary prerequisites.