Google Cloud's buildpacks is anopen-source project that takes your application source code and transforms it into production-readycontainer images. The buildpacks published by Google Cloud implementtheCloud Native Buildpack specification and are designed to help you build and configure containers that you candeploy to Google Cloud.

A buildpack is typically responsible for a languagecomponent, toolchain, or app component; such as Python,pip, or a web server.Buildpacks are grouped together into collections calledbuilders that can analyze project source code,create a build plan, and generate a container image that is ready for deployment.

Containerization with buildpacks

When you deploy to and serve your application (service) or function on theGoogle Cloud Serverless products,your code gets packaged into a runnable container using buildpacks.On Cloud Run, you have the option to deploy a pre-built container ordeploy your source codeto let Cloud Run manage the container build. On Cloud Run functions andApp Engine, the containerization process is fully-managed, meaning that whenyou deploy your source code, all the container image packaging and convertingis done for you.

Each container image gets built with all the components needed for running yourdeployment, including source code, system and library dependencies, configurationdata, and static assets. By default, the Google Cloud Serverless productsuse the same underlying services, including Cloud Build for the deploymentpipeline, and either Container Registry or Artifact Registry for container image storageand management.

When using Google Cloud's buildpacks:

• Builders and buildpacks are pre-configured to handle the build processand create a runnable container image for you.
• Buildpacks supportmultiple programming languages and automaticallydetects which lanaguage is used in your source code.
• You cancustomize and extend buildpacksto install additional system dependencies. However, the default builder canhandle the common tasks required by your programming language,including installing dependencies from the language's package repositoryand using the language's common dependency file.

Use buildpacks to containerize your code

Buildpacks can be used locally or remotely to:

• Build an application or service
• Build a function

For programming languages that exclude a standard ways to start an application,you can use aProcfile to define the process to invoke when a container starts.AProcfile can be used to override the default start process for anybuildpacks type, but is mandatory for some, includingPython.

What's next

• Builders
• Build an application
• Build a function
• Learn aboutCloud Native Buildpacks