A module's recipe starts from this image and invokes the compiler out of it, so
the compiler had to be here. The same image was also what every module ran in,
so every running container on every machine carried a compiler it would never
invoke: 23 of the 28 MB of libraries. An earlier attempt to prune the build
tools produced a smaller image that nothing could be built on, and the comment
defending their return made a workaround look like a decision.
One recipe, because the two must agree about the operating system, the language
version and the library, and two files drift.
It copied in a compiled directory that is not in source control and resolved
the toolkit to a sibling checkout, so only a workstation with two repositories
side by side could produce it — and its fingerprint was then typed into every
module by hand. Nothing could rebuild it, so nothing could check it, and the
rule that catches a base moving had no version on the far end of its edge.
The recipe now also says what the image in service actually is. It claimed
Alpine and has been serving Debian for as long as nobody could rebuild it.
jschoubben