aeron / mimalloc-container

A pre-built MiMalloc library container.

MiMalloc Container

A supplemental container image with pre-built MiMalloc shared libraries.

Motivation

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.

Usage

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.

Multi-stage Image

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.

Acknowledgment

The MiMalloc is an open-source project made by Microsoft Corporation, Daan Leijen, and its contributors, available under MIT license.