buildah Command

The buildah command builds OCI and Docker container images without requiring a running daemon. Part of the Podman container ecosystem developed by Red Hat, Buildah provides fine-grained control over the image build process — either using standard Dockerfiles or through scripted builds that manipulate container layers directly.

Buildah is particularly valuable in CI/CD pipelines where running a Docker daemon is impractical or a security concern. It can build images as a regular user (rootless), does not require any long-running background process, and produces images compatible with Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, and any OCI-compliant runtime.

While podman build uses Buildah internally for Dockerfile-based builds, the buildah CLI adds unique capabilities: scripted builds without Dockerfiles, mounting container filesystems on the host, fine-grained layer control, and the ability to build from scratch (empty) images. This makes Buildah ideal for creating minimal, optimized container images for production.

Option	Description	Example
from	Create a working container from a base image	buildah from alpine:3.19
run	Run a command inside the working container	buildah run $ctr apk add --no-cache python3
copy	Copy files into the working container	buildah copy $ctr ./app /app
config	Set image configuration (CMD, ENV, EXPOSE, etc.)	buildah config --cmd "python3 /app/main.py" $ctr
commit	Create an image from a working container	buildah commit $ctr myapp:latest
bud (build-using-dockerfile)	Build image from Dockerfile	buildah bud -t myapp:latest .
mount	Mount working container filesystem on host	mnt=$(buildah mount $ctr)
unmount	Unmount a working container filesystem	buildah unmount $ctr
images	List locally stored images	buildah images
rm	Remove a working container	buildah rm $ctr