Using and deploying Chainguard Containers on

How to use Chainguard Containers

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 08:49:31 +0000

Chainguard Containers are minimal container images designed to reduce vulnerabilities and attack surface compared to traditional base images. These images use the apk package format to achieve smaller sizes while maintaining complete provenance information with cryptographic signatures, ensuring both enhanced security and traceability.

In this guide, you’ll find general instructions on how to get started using Chainguard Containers and how to migrate existing container-based workflows to use our images. For specific image usage instructions, please refer to our Chainguard Containers Directory, which contains the full list of all images available to the public and their respective documentation.

Using Chainguard Containers in Dev Containers

Mon, 10 Mar 2025 11:07:52 +0200

Development Containers — sometimes known as “dev containers” — allow you to use a container as a development environment where you can run applications and separate tools, libraries, or runtimes. Dev containers can also help with testing and continuous integration.

With a few changes, the images based on Wolfi and maintained by Chainguard provide distroless images that can be used as dev containers. This guide outlines how you can set up a Chainguard image as a dev container in VS Code.

Using init containers with Chainguard Containers

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 15:21:01 +0000

Chainguard Containers are designed with minimalism and security in mind. By including fewer packages and tools, Chainguard Containers have a smaller attack surface than their counterparts. However, there are cases where the external counterparts have certain desirable features, like useful startup scripts or configuration defaults.

There are several ways to customize Chainguard Containers. For example, you can use Custom Assembly to add packages to an otherwise minimal Chainguard container image. Changing a Chainguard container image’s configuration — such as updating its entrypoint or adding startup scripts — requires a different strategy. One method for doing so in Kubernetes deployments is to use init containers.

How to use Chainguard Containers with OpenShift

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 08:49:31 +0000

Chainguard Containers are fully compatible with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, providing enhanced security while requiring some configuration adjustments for OpenShift’s security context constraints. This guide explains how to successfully deploy Chainguard’s minimal, security-hardened container images in OpenShift environments.

Red Hat OpenShift is an application platform that orchestrates and manages your systems and resources. While it is based on open source software like Kubernetes, OpenShift includes a suite of applications with additional functionality that are configured to work together.

Chainguard Helm charts

Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000