The GitHub Actions Base Image is a Whopping 47 GiB

GitHub Actions is praised for improving CI/CD developer experience, but criticized for its approximately 47 GiB base image, which includes numerous language runtimes, SDKs, package managers, build tools, cloud CLIs, and browsers despite many users installing pinned dependencies themselves. The author argues that such expansive platform-specific images can reduce performance, introduce breaking changes when maintained software is updated, and make pipeline scripts difficult to port to other environments. RWX is presented as an alternative that uses a generic Ubuntu base image with only essential tools and Docker components installed through a transparent Dockerfile, aiming to improve portability, debugging, reuse, and control over dependencies.

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