BuildKit vs Enroot
BuildKit
github.comEnroot
github.comSide by side
| Figure | BuildKit | Enroot |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Engines | 8.9 (#2) | 7.7 (#11) |
| Integrations | BuildKit documentation lists integrations or usage with Podman, nerdctl, Kubernetes, Docker buildx, GitHub Actions cache, S3 cache, Azure Blob Storage cache, and OpenTelemetry. | Standard hooks can provide NVIDIA GPU support and inject Mellanox host MOFED for InfiniBand HCA support into containers. |
| License | BuildKit is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, which grants perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free copyright rights subject to the license terms. | The project is released under the Apache License 2.0. |
| Purpose | BuildKit is a toolkit for converting source code to build artifacts in an efficient, expressive and repeatable manner. | Enroot turns traditional container and OS images into unprivileged sandboxes. |
| Security reporting | Security issues should be reported privately to [email protected], and the project currently does not offer a paid security bounty program. | The security policy asks reporters to disclose vulnerabilities by emailing [email protected] instead of opening an issue or pull request. |
Plans
In their own words
BuildKit
BuildKit is a free toolkit for turning source code into build artifacts. It consists of the buildkitd daemon and buildctl client, and uses LLB, a binary format for describing process dependency graphs. Builds can use Dockerfiles or other LLB-compatible frontends, resolve dependencies concurrently, cache instructions, import and export caches, run nested jobs, and collect unused data automatically. BuildKit supports execution without root privileges and OCI (runc) or containerd workers. Results can be exported as images, local directories, tarballs, Docker tarballs, or OCI tarballs. Cache options include inline, registry, local-directory, and GitHub Actions backends; the README marks GitHub Actions, S3, and Azure Blob options experimental. The daemon provides a gRPC API over a Unix socket by default, with TCP sockets also supported. Binaries are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. The unofficial Homebrew formula for macOS omits buildkitd; the project gives Lima in a Linux virtual machine as one way to run it. BuildKit is licensed under Apache-2.0.
Enroot
Enroot is a free, open-source Linux command-line utility that turns traditional container and operating-system images into unprivileged sandboxes. It is aimed at high-performance or virtualized environments where portability and reproducibility matter and additional isolation is not required. Enroot runs without a daemon and supports unprivileged multi-user use without a setuid binary. Linux user and mount namespaces preserve filesystem separation, while the project provides little to no isolation. The command line covers batch, bundle, create, exec, export, import, list, remove, and start operations. It imports known formats including Docker, with the README reporting a 3x to 5x speedup for large Docker-image imports. Built-in GPU support uses libnvidia-container, and hooks can add NVIDIA support or Mellanox host MOFED. Runtime settings come from enroot.conf or higher-priority environment variables. Standard and hardened package flavors are available.