Use offline buildpacks

The official buildpacks offered by the Cloud Foundry Foundation are online (or uncached) buildpacks - they need to download dependencies from the Internet during the application staging process. For example, language interpreters, and compilers.

If these dependencies are not available, the application staging fails. This can be problematic in environments with restricted Internet access or when the dependencies are no longer available online.

For such scenarios STACKIT Cloud Foundry also offers locally available, offline buildpacks. These cached buildpacks include all necessary dependencies, ensuring that the application staging process can complete successfully without needing to download anything from the Internet.

Available offline buildpacks

You can list the available offline buildpacks with the following command:

cf buildpacks | grep _offline

Here is a sample output:

23 staticfile_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs3 true false READY staticfile_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs3-v1.6.15.zip
24 java_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs3 true false READY java-buildpack-offline-v4.71.0.zip
25 ruby_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs3 true false READY ruby_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs3-v1.10.17.zip
26 dotnet_core_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs3 true false READY dotnet-core_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs3-v2.4.32.zip
27 go_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs3 true false READY go_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs3-v1.10.22.zip
28 nodejs_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs3 true false READY nodejs_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs3-v1.8.27.zip
29 python_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs3 true false READY python_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs3-v1.8.28.zip
30 php_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs3 true false READY php_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs3-v4.6.23.zip
31 binary_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs3 true false READY binary_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs3-v1.1.13.zip
32 nginx_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs3 true false READY nginx_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs3-v1.2.18.zip
33 r_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs3 true false READY r_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs3-v1.2.14.zip
34 staticfile_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs4 true false READY staticfile_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs4-v1.6.15.zip
35 ruby_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs4 true false READY ruby_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs4-v1.10.17.zip
36 dotnet_core_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs4 true false READY dotnet-core_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs4-v2.4.32.zip
37 go_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs4 true false READY go_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs4-v1.10.22.zip
38 nodejs_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs4 true false READY nodejs_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs4-v1.8.27.zip
39 python_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs4 true false READY python_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs4-v1.8.28.zip
40 php_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs4 true false READY php_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs4-v4.6.23.zip
41 binary_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs4 true false READY binary_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs4-v1.1.13.zip
42 nginx_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs4 true false READY nginx_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs4-v1.2.18.zip
43 r_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs4 true false READY r_buildpack-cached-cflinuxfs4-v1.2.14.zip
44 java_buildpack_offline cflinuxfs4 true false READY java-buildpack-offline-v4.71.0.zip

As you can see, the offline buildpacks are available with the latest stack (cflinuxfs4) and with the previous, now deprecated, stack (cflinuxfs3).

Usage

Via the command line

You can use the offline buildpacks by either specifying one as an option to the cf push command :

cf push myapp --buildpack java_buildpack_offline [--stack cflinuxfs4]

Via a manifest-file

Or you could include one (or more) in a manifest:

---
  ...
  buildpacks:
  - java_buildpack_offline
  ...
  stack: cflinuxfs4
  ...