Developing New Extensions¶

You can add new functionality to the zot registry by developing extensions for integration into zot.

The OCI Distribution Specification supports extending the functionality of an OCI-compliant registry implementation by adding extensions. Extensions are new APIs developed outside of the core OCI specs. Developers may propose their extensions to the OCI for possible future addition to the Distribution Specification.

When planning the development of a new extension, be sure to familiarize yourself with the OCI documentation and guidelines for extensions.

Current extensions¶

The following extensions are currently available in the zot project:

• metrics
• sync
• search
• scrub
• lint

You can examine the implementation of these extensions in the zot project extensions section. The operation and configuration of the current extensions is described in Configuring zot.

Guidelines for developing new extensions¶

• Each file to be included in the binary for only a specific extension must contain the following syntax at the beginning of the file. For example, a file to be included in the build for extension foo must begin with the following lines:

  //go:build foo
  // +build foo

  package foo

  ...

- The first line (`//go:build foo`) is added automatically by the linter if not already present.

- The second line and the third (blank) line are mandatory.

• For each file that contains functions specific to the extension, create a corresponding "no-op" file that contains exactly the same function names. In this file:

  • Each function is a "no-op," performing no action other than to return a "success" value if expected.
  • We recommend naming this "no-op" file by appending -disabled to the name of the original file. For example, if the extension is implemented by extension-foo.go, the corresponding "no-op" file could be named extension-foo-disabled.go.
  • The first two lines declare an "anti-tag" (for example, !foo). In the foo extension example, the "no-op" file will be included in binaries that don't implement the foo extension, but won't be included in binaries that implement the foo extension. The foo example "no-op" file begins with the following lines:

    //go:build !foo
    // +build !foo

    package foo

    ...

• When developing a new extension, you should create a blackbox test in which a binary containing the new extension can be tested in a usage scenario. See the test/blackbox folder in the zot project for examples of extension tests.

  • Create targets in Makefile for newly added blackbox tests. You should also add them as GitHub Workflows in .github/workflows/ecosystem-tools.yaml in the zot project.

• When configuring multiple extensions in the extensions section of the zot configuration file, list new extensions after the current extensions in the recommended order, such as:

  metrics, sync, search, scrub, lint, new_extension_1, new_extension_2, ...

Building zot with extensions¶

When you build the full zot image (for example, make binary), all extensions listed in the EXTENSIONS variable in Makefile are included in the build. When you've created a new extension, you must modify the EXTENSIONS variable in Makefile by adding the new extension.

To build an image with only selected extensions, you can specify the desired extensions by declaring them in the build command:

make binary EXTENSIONS=extension1,extension2,extension3...

For example, to build with only sync and scrub, the command would be:

make binary EXTENSIONS=sync,scrub