This is a cool idea that seems like it would integrate well with systems already using push deploy tooling like Ansible. It also seems like it would work as a good hotfix deployment mechanism at companies where the Docker registry doesn't have 24/7 support.
Does it integrate cleanly with OCI tooling like buildah etc, or if you need to have a full-blown Docker install on both ends? I haven't dug deeply into this yet because it's related to some upcoming work, but it seems like bootstrapping a mini registry on the remote server is the missing piece for skopeo to be able to work for this kind of setup.
You need a containerd on the remote end (Docker and Kubernetes use containerd) and anything that speaks registry API (OCI Distribution spec: https://github.com/opencontainers/distribution-spec) on the client. Unregistry reuses the official Docker registry code for the API layer so it looks and feels like https://hub.docker.com/_/registry
You can use skopeo, crane, regclient, BuildKit, anything that speaks OCI-registry on the client. Although you will need to manually run unregistry on the remote host to use them. 'docker pussh' command just automates the workflow using the local Docker.
I agree! For a bunch of services I manage I build the image locally, save it and then use ansible to upload the archive and restore the image. This usually takes a lot longer than I want it to!
Does it integrate cleanly with OCI tooling like buildah etc, or if you need to have a full-blown Docker install on both ends? I haven't dug deeply into this yet because it's related to some upcoming work, but it seems like bootstrapping a mini registry on the remote server is the missing piece for skopeo to be able to work for this kind of setup.