Introduction

Buildpacks provide a simple way to create production-ready container images for your applications without writing Dockerfiles. They automatically detect your application’s language, install the required runtime, dependencies, and configure the environment.

The pack CLI is the official tool for working with Cloud Native Buildpacks. It allows developers to build and run container images locally before deploying to platforms like Heroku or Kubernetes

Prerequisites

Before installing the pack CLI, ensure you have:

  • Ubuntu server (20.04 / 22.04 / 24.04 recommended)
  • SSH user with sudo privileges
  • Docker installed and running

Implementation

Step 1: Download pack CLI

Download the latest pack release and extract it to /usr/local/bin:

$ curl -sSL “https://github.com/buildpacks/pack/releases/latest/download/pack-linux.tgz” \
| sudo tar -C /usr/local/bin -xz pack

Step 2: Set Execute Permission

$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/pack

Step 3: Verify Installation

Confirm that pack is installed successfully:

$ pack –version

You should see the version of the pack installed.

Step 4: Verify Available Builders

Check which builders are available to build images:

$ pack builder suggest

You will see builders like:

  • heroku/builder:24
  • paketobuildpacks/builder:base

These builders provide predefined stacks for building your applications.

Conclusion

Installing the pack CLI is the first step in leveraging Buildpacks to create production-ready container images. Once installed, you can easily build, run, and deploy applications without manually writing Dockerfiles.

With Docker and pack installed, you are now ready to use commands to build clean, reproducible container images for your applications.

For example:

$ pack build node-backend –builder heroku/builder:24 –clear-cache

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