Definitions

This page presents some common terms used throughout the earthly documentation. Understanding these terms with help you understand how to use earthly.

Earthly - the build automation system as a whole
earthly - the CLI tool used to interact with Earthly
Earthfile - a file (named literally Earthfile) which contains a series of targets and their respective recipes
buildkitd - a daemon built by the Docker team and used by Earthly to execute builds. It executes LLB, the same low-level primitives used when building Dockerfiles. The buildkitd daemon is started automatically in a docker container, by earthly, when executing builds.
recipe - a specific series of build steps
target - the label used to identify a recipe. 'Target' is also used to refer to a build of a specific target.
build context - the main directory made available to the build for copying files from
artifact - a file resulting from executing a target (not all targets have artifacts)
image - a docker image resulting from executing a target (not all targets have images)

See also