A supplemental container image with pre-built MiMalloc shared libraries.
Alpine Linux is great for container images because of how compact it is. But it’s also known for its slow memory allocator (malloc-ng).
So, if you need a containerized application that relies on a system allocator and shared libraries, and there is no way to compile it statically, an Alpine-based image is not a viable option probably.
Yet, there is a way—to override a memory allocator. And mimalloc
is usually a safe all-rounder. However, an intermediate building stage image is not
always convenient if you can have a pre-compiled one in reach.
And here it is. Mostly, it’s for my personal needs. But if you find it useful as well, give it a try.
The container image is available as docker.io/aeron/mimalloc
and
ghcr.io/Aeron/mimalloc
. You can use both interchangeably.
docker pull docker.io/aeron/mimalloc
# …or…
docker pull ghcr.io/aeron/mimalloc
The image contains both library flavors: faster libmimalloc.so
and hardened
libmimalloc-secure.so
; Both are in the /usr/lib
directory.
The simplest and precise way is to use --from
option of the COPY
directive, like so:
FROM docker.io/library/alpine:latest
COPY --from=docker.io/aeron/mimalloc:latest /usr/lib/libmimalloc.so /lib/.
# …or…
COPY --from=docker.io/aeron/mimalloc:latest /usr/lib/libmimalloc-secure.so /lib/.
ENV LD_PRELOAD=/lib/libmimalloc.so
# …or…
ENV LD_PRELOAD=/lib/libmimalloc-secure.so
ENV MIMALLOC_ALLOW_LARGE_OS_PAGES=1
It will copy the shared library flavor you prefer in a suitable destination. And you
need to explicitly set the LD_PRELOAD
and other variables (like
MIMALLOC_ALLOW_LARGE_OS_PAGES
) if you need them.
The MiMalloc is an open-source project made by Microsoft Corporation, Daan Leijen, and its contributors, available under MIT license.