I agree, the Nix approach makes lots of problems go away, but you have to be bought in first. I wrote something distinct a few months back which overlaps on the

I agree, the Nix approach makes lots of problems go away, but you have to be bought in first. I wrote something distinct a few months back which overlaps on the "we can be smarter about layers" thing[0]. Google folks worked on "FTL", which is a technique for determining layering by reasoning about packaging system information. Jib[1] is one such system. There is a view that it will be possible to use FTL implementations or derivatives as buildpack components in the future. [0] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M2PJ_h6GzviUNHMPt7x-5POUaadcvK3ZNT9QEGDZhPk/edit# https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M2PJ_h6GzviUNHMPt7x-5POU... [1] https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/jib https://github.com/GoogleContainerTools/jib