Moby Project Roadmap
 ====================

 
 ### How should I use this document?
 
 This document provides description of items that the project decided to prioritize. This should

 serve as a reference point for Moby contributors to understand where the project is going, and
 help determine if a contribution could be conflicting with some longer term plans.

 
 The fact that a feature isn't listed here doesn't mean that a patch for it will automatically be

 refused! We are always happy to receive patches for new cool features we haven't thought about,
 or didn't judge to be a priority. Please however understand that such patches might take longer
 for us to review.

 
 ### How can I help?
 

 Short term objectives are listed in
 [Issues](https://github.com/moby/moby/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Aroadmap). Our

 goal is to split down the workload in such way that anybody can jump in and help. Please comment on

 issues if you want to work on it to avoid duplicating effort! Similarly, if a maintainer is already
 assigned on an issue you'd like to participate in, pinging him on GitHub to offer your help is

 the best way to go.
 
 ### How can I add something to the roadmap?
 

 The roadmap process is new to the Moby Project: we are only beginning to structure and document the

 project objectives. Our immediate goal is to be more transparent, and work with our community to
 focus our efforts on fewer prioritized topics.
 
 We hope to offer in the near future a process allowing anyone to propose a topic to the roadmap, but

 we are not quite there yet. For the time being, it is best to discuss with the maintainers on an
 issue, in the Slack channel, or in person at the Moby Summits that happen every few months.

 
 # 1. Features and refactoring
 

 ## 1.1 Runtime improvements

 Over time we have accumulated a lot of functionality in the container runtime
 aspect of Moby while also growing in other areas. Much of the container runtime
 pieces are now duplicated work available in other, lower level components such
 as [containerd](https://containerd.io).

 Moby currently only utilizes containerd for basic runtime state management, e.g. starting
 and stopping a container, which is what the pre-containerd 1.0 daemon provided.
 Now that containerd is a full-fledged container runtime which supports full
 container life-cycle management, we would like to start relying more on containerd

 and removing the bits in Moby which are now duplicated. This will necessitate
 a significant effort to refactor and even remove large parts of Moby's codebase.

 Tracking issues:

 - [#38043](https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/38043) Proposal: containerd image integration
 
 ## 1.2 Image Builder
 
 Work is ongoing to integrate [BuildKit](https://github.com/moby/buildkit) into
 Moby and replace the "v0" build implementation. Buildkit offers better cache
 management, parallelizable build steps, and better extensibility while also
 keeping builds portable, a chief tenent of Moby's builder.
 
 Upon completion of this effort, users will have a builder that performs better
 while also being more extensible, enabling users to provide their own custom
 syntax which can be either Dockerfile-like or something completely different.
 
 See [buildpacks on buildkit](https://github.com/tonistiigi/buildkit-pack) as an
 example of this extensibility.
 
 New features for the builder and Dockerfile should be implemented first in the
 BuildKit backend using an external Dockerfile implementation from the container
 images. This allows everyone to test and evaluate the feature without upgrading
 their daemon. New features should go to the experimental channel first, and can be
 part of the `docker/dockerfile:experimental` image. From there they graduate to
 `docker/dockerfile:latest` and binary releases. The Dockerfile frontend source
 code is temporarily located at
 [https://github.com/moby/buildkit/tree/master/frontend/dockerfile](https://github.com/moby/buildkit/tree/master/frontend/dockerfile)
 with separate new features defined with go build tags.
 
 Tracking issues:
 
 - [#32925](https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/32925) discussion: builder future: buildkit
 
 ## 1.3 Rootless Mode
 
 Running the daemon requires elevated privileges for many tasks. We would like to

 support running the daemon as a normal, unprivileged user without requiring `suid`

 binaries.
 
 Tracking issues:
 
 - [#37375](https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/37375) Proposal: allow running `dockerd` as an unprivileged user (aka rootless mode)
 
 ## 1.4 Testing
 
 Moby has many tests, both unit and integration. Moby needs more tests which can
 cover the full spectrum functionality and edge cases out there.
 
 Tests in the `integration-cli` folder should also be migrated into (both in
 location and style) the `integration` folder. These newer tests are simpler to
 run in isolation, simpler to read, simpler to write, and more fully exercise the
 API. Meanwhile tests of the docker CLI should generally live in docker/cli.
 
 Tracking issues:
 
 - [#32866](https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/32866) Replace integration-cli suite with API test suite
 
 ## 1.5 Internal decoupling

 A lot of work has been done in trying to decouple Moby internals. This process of creating
 standalone projects with a well defined function that attract a dedicated community should continue.
 As well as integrating `containerd` we would like to integrate [BuildKit](https://github.com/moby/buildkit)
 as the next standalone component.
 We see gRPC as the natural communication layer between decoupled components.

 In addition to pushing out large components into other projects, much of the
 internal code structure, and in particular the
 ["Daemon"](https://godoc.org/github.com/docker/docker/daemon#Daemon) object,
 should be split into smaller, more manageable, and more testable components.