Proposal: Ruby 3.4.5 Distroless Example

[michael-lins]

Context

• Back in January 2018, Issue #156 asked: “Add a Ruby distroless?” That request was closed without resolution. (#156)
• Community members have created proof-of-concept images showing Ruby works on Distroless, including:
  • junminhong/ruby-distroless (supports Ruby 2.5–3.4, amd64 & arm64)
  • Other community attempts like unasuke/distroless-ruby and lstn/distroless
• This demonstrates that Ruby can run on Distroless, but the official repo has no scoped example.

Proposal

Introduce a scoped example under examples/ruby/, including:

• Multi-stage Dockerfile:
  • Builder stage installs Ruby 3.4.5 and dependencies
  • Runtime stage uses gcr.io/distroless/base-debian12:nonroot
• Minimal app.rb that prints Hello from Ruby 3.4.5
• README.md documenting build and run instructions
• Update examples/README.md to acknowledge the new Ruby example

Why

• Demonstrates feasibility in a low-maintenance, transparent context
• Serves as a foundation for potential future Bazel-backed official images
• Low-risk contribution: no disruption to existing runtime images

Next Steps

Would the maintainers be open to reviewing a PR implementing this example?

[michael-lins]

Nice, forked it and just started working on the PR! Planning to send it next week.

[loosebazooka]

so putting this in examples is probably fine, I don't see us adding a ruby build though to our releases.