mcrouter — container images

Builds facebook/mcrouter from source on Ubuntu 24.04 and publishes multi-arch, cosign-signed images to ghcr.io/dragoangel/mcrouter. Upstream ships no images or packages for external users; this fills that gap. No upstream code is vendored — the build clones mcrouter at a pinned version and applies any local patches/.

Image

docker pull ghcr.io/dragoangel/mcrouter:latest
docker pull ghcr.io/dragoangel/mcrouter:v2026.06.29.00

docker run --rm --network host ghcr.io/dragoangel/mcrouter:latest \
  --config-str='{"pools":{"A":{"servers":["127.0.0.1:11211"]}},"route":"PoolRoute|A"}' -p 5000

Verify the signature (keyless / OIDC):

cosign verify ghcr.io/dragoangel/mcrouter:latest \
  --certificate-identity-regexp '^https://github.com/dragoangel/mcrouter/' \
  --certificate-oidc-issuer https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com

Debian package

Each release attaches, per arch (amd64 + arm64):

• mcrouter_<version>_<arch>.deb — self-contained runtime (bundles the Meta libs, pulls system libs via apt, creates the mcrouter user, ships a systemd unit).
• mcrouter-dbgsym_<version>_<arch>.deb — detached debug symbols for gdb, installable alongside.

apt-get install ./mcrouter_<version>_<arch>.deb        # stripped runtime
systemctl edit --full mcrouter                         # then configure /etc/mcrouter/config.json
apt-get install ./mcrouter-dbgsym_<version>_<arch>.deb  # optional: debug symbols

The container image installs only the stripped runtime package.

Layout

Path	Purpose
build.mcrouter.lock	Upstream version built and tagged (tag or SHA)
build.deps.lock	Pinned Meta dep commits (folly/fbthrift/…); upstream ships none, so scripts/build-deps-update-lock.sh locks them to the mcrouter tag's era
patches/	Local patches (empty = clean upstream build)
Dockerfile	Clone upstream at that version, apply patches/, build (CMake), slim runtime
compose.yml	Local smoke test — mcrouter + memcached
.github/	CI/CD workflows (see below) + Dependabot
scripts/	Maintenance helpers (see below)
charts/mcrouter	Helm chart for the image

Workflows

Workflow	Purpose
ci.yml	On PR: build-verify the image + lint/render the chart + schema/README drift check
publish-image.yml	Build + push + cosign-sign multi-arch image; GitHub release with per-arch .debs
update-mcrouter-version.yml	Weekly PR bumping build.mcrouter.lock + build.deps.lock + chart
publish-helm-chart.yml	Package + push + cosign-sign the Helm chart to GHCR as an OCI artifact
publish-artifacthub-meta.yml	On artifacthub-repo.yml change: push the metadata to GHCR for Artifact Hub

Scripts

Script	Purpose
deb-gen-package.sh	Build the runtime + -dbgsym .debs (invoked by the Dockerfile)
build-deps-update-lock.sh	Regenerate build.deps.lock for the pinned version
helm-gen-docs-and-schema.sh	Regenerate the chart's values.schema.json + README.md

Build / pin locally

docker build --build-arg MCROUTER_VERSION="$(cat build.mcrouter.lock)" -t mcrouter:local .

Change the built version by editing build.mcrouter.lock (a v20YY.MM.DD.NN tag or a SHA); the auto-update workflow does this when upstream tags a newer one.

Compose

compose.yml runs mcrouter in front of a single memcached:

docker compose up                                  # published image
MCROUTER_IMAGE=mcrouter:local docker compose up    # a local build

# test -> STORED / VALUE k 0 1 / 1 / END
printf 'set k 0 0 1\r\n1\r\nget k\r\nquit\r\n' | nc 127.0.0.1 5000

Attribution

mcrouter is © Facebook/Meta, MIT-licensed — see the upstream repo. This repository holds only original build/CI tooling by Dmytro Alieksieiev (dragoangel), also MIT (LICENSE).