BuildKit
Fewer than 5 people recommend it so far, so there's no written verdict. Here is what commenters said.
2recommend
3warn against
Dec 24, 2025first mention
Oct 25, 2026latest mention
Why people recommend it
“using a better tool to access containers (BuildKit), like Dagger”
“Recent versions of buildkit have added support for SOURCE_DATE_EPOC.”
Show 1 more
“But the real hidden power of buildkit is the ability to swap out the Dockerfile parser.”
Caveats and dissent
“The BuiltKit API sucks compared to Dagger's”
“running BuildKit to power our remote container builders”
Show 2 more
“It sounds great in theory, but it JustDoesn'tWork(tm).”
“But the `proto` stage will never use cache.”
Often compared with
Threads where it came up
- A faster path to container images in Bazel 4 mentions
- BuildKit: Docker's Hidden Gem That Can Build Almost Anything 3 mentions
- We should be more ambitious with the software we build 2 mentions
- The physics of Docker build caching 1 mention
- Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026) 1 mention
- Run NanoClaw in Docker Sandboxes 1 mention
Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 13
“The BuiltKit API sucks compared to Dagger's”
“I don’t think anything using BuildKit is as fine grained as Bazel.”
“You might also learn quite a bit about BuildKit Caching from my blog post”
“release a BuildKit integration”
“using a better tool to access containers (BuildKit), like Dagger”
“Recent versions of buildkit have added support for SOURCE_DATE_EPOC.”
“running BuildKit to power our remote container builders”
“It sounds great in theory, but it JustDoesn'tWork(tm).”
“But the real hidden power of buildkit is the ability to swap out the Dockerfile parser.”
“Buildkit, at least prior to docker 29, executes runc directly.”
“But the `proto` stage will never use cache.”
“And failing, because it simply doesn't work.”
“And it's also just plain buggy.”