Define where an image is built

Defining the image builder.

ZenML executes pipeline steps sequentially in the active Python environment when running locally. However, with remote orchestrators or step operators, ZenML builds Docker images to run your pipeline in an isolated, well-defined environment.

By default, execution environments are created locally in the client environment using the local Docker client. However, this requires Docker installation and permissions. ZenML offers image builders, a special stack component, allowing users to build and push Docker images in a different specialized image builder environment.

Note that even if you don't configure an image builder in your stack, ZenML still uses the local image builder to retain consistency across all builds. In this case, the image builder environment is the same as the client environment.

You don't need to directly interact with any image builder in your code. As long as the image builder that you want to use is part of your active ZenML stack, it will be used automatically by any component that needs to build container images.