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Dagger Weekly Brief: Discord + GitHub Beat (Jan 22-29, 2026)

Dagger Weekly Brief: Discord + GitHub Beat

Week of Jan 22-29, 2026


Table of Contents

  1. TL;DR
  2. Customers
  3. Native CI & Cloud
  4. Core Engineering
  5. Community Feedback
  6. Team Updates
  7. GitHub Activity

TL;DR

Native CI Smart Checks shipped to dagger/dagger - CI now only runs checks affected by the diff. ModTree merged, paving way for dagger generate. AWS Secrets Manager + Parameter Store support merged. Deep design discussions on Toolchains v2 and killing +defaultPath. Team coworking in SF confirmed for March. BuildKit solver removal started (WIP).


Customers

NowBookIt - Native CI POC

#nowbookit https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/1463689698080985219/1463690880866189342

Julien (tweek8528) already running Dagger+Azure DevOps in production. Started Native CI POC this week.

  • Pricing: Team plan ($50/mo) + $0.022/min compute
  • Blocker: Hashicorp Vault via Azure DevOps secrets injection; need VPC connectivity
  • Using vitest not jest - TomChv shipped updated vitest toolchain mid-week
  • Module catalog unavailable (Azure DevOps, not GitHub)

Shortcut.ai - Toolchain Customization

#shortcut-ai https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/1445185647102005514/1465100228460941443

gdevillele testing prettier/eslint toolchains on Shortcut monorepo. Package manager mismatch (npm vs pnpm). kpenfound ported package manager choice from jest toolchain - resolved by EOW.

Block/Goose - Native CI Preview

#block-goose https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/1370205495083925626/1464020457358360627

Meeting with Block team. wompfox explained preview access: Team Cloud account, $0.022/min pricing, runners comparable to GitHub 8-core large but faster.

Fanvue - Engine Restart Bug

#fanvue https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/1450533912957947974/1463972549531668664

m0ltz reported Docker engine container restarting every minute on EC2. sipsma suggested docker events and dmesg for diagnosis. Instance terminated before root cause found.

Other Activity

  • #betclic: Local macOS performance concerns with colima/docker/orbstack. Cloud offload offered as alternative.
  • #quantumgas: valorl available for POC, needs setup info.
  • #echo-ai: New channel created Jan 26 for possible POC.

Native CI & Cloud

Smart Checks Go Live

#team https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/783828171153866782/1466443158874361981

Smart checks went live on dagger/dagger this week. Instead of running all checks on every commit, only checks affected by the diff now run. marcosnils reported early results showing roughly half the checks running on a typical PR, with the team finally able to say "we shouldn't be overspending for our CI anymore."

Edge case identified: PRs with merge conflicts don't trigger CI because Native CI uses pull_request (merge commit) rather than pull_request_target (branch HEAD). eunomie raised this as a UX consideration - sometimes you want CI even with conflicts. Team discussing whether to add toggle in Cloud settings.

Engine Scheduling Explained

#team https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/783828171153866782/1466494902904029430

Detailed explanation of how cloud engine scheduling works for local checkouts. The scheduler prioritizes:

  1. Running VM with engine version + module
  2. Running VM with engine version only
  3. Paused VM with engine version + module
  4. Paused VM with engine version only

For local executions without .git metadata, only engine version is matched (chicken-and-egg: need engine to get git metadata). This explains why consecutive local runs sometimes hit different engines.

Infrastructure Incidents

#infrastructure https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/1123645991862673408/1465559489372754031

  • Jan 27: Brief dagger.cloud outage due to CORS/CSP errors from a deployment. marcosnils fixed quickly.
  • Jan 12: CI hit widespread "timeout exceeded" errors provisioning remote engines.
  • vito fixed branch deletion events causing HTTP 500s on /modules/events endpoint.

Core Engineering

Toolchains v2 Design

#maintainers > Toolchains v2 https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/1003718839739105300/1464427645180710992

Deep design thread from Jan 24 on the breaking change to toolchain API for explicit Env. Key decisions:

  • Need to attach dynamic filtering to Env to replace defaultPath
  • New intermediary type Filesystem to represent a live filesystem backed by session attachables
  • currentEnv() behavior is "pretty broken" - started as best approximation, never load-bearing
  • Discussion of whether dagger -m becomes ambiguous (load functions vs enter project context)
  • vito noted defaultPath for LLM-attached modules can theoretically be deleted since it will be replaced by Env in constructor

Generated Go Client v2

#maintainers > Error in generated go client https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/1003718839739105300/1465764711101497467

Active thread spanning Jan 27-29 on issues with the generated Go client:

  1. dagger client install go overwrites replace directives, breaking dev version testing
  2. Multiple compilation errors with undefined types (subnetNumber, sourcePath, etc.)
  3. github.com/docker/docker/pkg/archive moved to github.com/moby/go-archive causing build failures

TomChv prototyping "generated client v2" with: separate go.mod for generated client, dependencies in their own pkg, depend on published library instead of bundling core bindings. wompfox also working on go.mod isolation - they synced to avoid overlap.

Test Harness Modernization

#team https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/783828171153866782/1465431134245748848

Discussion on adopting the "testcontainers pattern" for integration tests. Goal: orchestrate test dependencies from test code rather than external setup. Related to Discussion #11710 on using Dagger like Testcontainers.

sipsma also identified that go test with -race was adding 1m30s overhead to each test. PR #11735 reduced this to ~10s while keeping -race on one workflow.

Bugs Fixed

Parallel Array Execution

#general https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/708371226174685314/1466428059782742213

neirda24 (presenting Dagger in Aix-En-Provence next week) reported that calling a function on an array of objects ran sequentially instead of concurrently. marcosnils confirmed the bug. vito merged PR #11764 "dagql: resolve array results in parallel" to fix.

Duration Doubling

#team > duration doubling https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/783828171153866782/1465462776838488309

sipsma spotted trace durations flip-flopping between correct and doubled values. vito identified root cause: span interval calculation broke when EarliestRunning fell within the last completed interval. Fixed in PR #11749.

Security Scan Failures

#maintainers > Fix for security scan failures https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/1003718839739105300/1464392149461237975

CI went red on security scans due to protobuf CVE in Python SDK dependency. sipsma opened PR #11736. Upstream fix not yet released, but merged a bump anyway.


Community Feedback

Log Visibility in CI

#general https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/708371226174685314/1466157781827588336

User feedback from vindico: "My Gitlab logs are 90% dagger output 10% mine, and it's been highlighted by users that we need the 10% and the 90% is just in the way."

shykes confirmed this is a known priority. Plan is to use OTEL span attributes to filter user-defined spans/logs from internal ones. The --progress options aren't ideal because they hide both Dagger output and user output.

Container-Use & Docker Compat

#container-use https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/1380291254625239060/1464345151714496545

Users reporting cu terminal not working with Dagger 0.15+, requiring 0.14. Workaround: use mise to pin Dagger version per-project, or wrap with dagger run. Community suggestion: quickstart docs could mention the Nix flake from github.com/dagger/nix.

#maintainers https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/1003718839739105300/1465786182645579990

frantjc building a Docker API compat module that translates docker CLI calls to Dagger engine. Asked about OTEL log attribution to identify which container/service a log came from. shykes noted Docker engine compat is "still highly desirable, but our plates are full internally." Focus is on supporting testcontainers pattern natively first.

Dagger on Kubernetes

#general https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/708371226174685314/1466182182824312966

Positive signal from rsquared3179 on K8s deployment: "1st time after engine starts it can take about 10m for all our tests to run, subsequent runs 1-2m for PR/MRs/merges."

shykes mentioned beta-testing hosted engines in Dagger Cloud with scale-out compute & cache persistence as alternative to self-hosting.


Team Updates

#team https://discord.com/channels/707636530424053791/783828171153866782/1465803064551411855

  • March SF coworking confirmed - eunomie joining, full team expected
  • shykes presenting at Intuit meetup (Jan 29)
  • New repo: github.com/dagger/jest for official Jest toolchain
  • Updated dagger-ci GitHub account icon to new branding

GitHub Activity

PRs Merged (21)

PR Title Author
#11764 dagql: resolve array results in parallel vito
#11757 chore: remove evaling span alexcb
#11756 fix missing content digest in git sipsma
#11755 chore: allow to handle changeset response eunomie
#11754 ref: extract patch preview eunomie
#11752 Fix bug in Go generated client shykes
#11749 dagui: fix interval duration calculation vito
#11747 skill: dagger codegen shykes
#11737 core/schema: add private _rebasedIncludePaths to moduleSource tiborvass
#11736 chore: bump python sdk dep for protobuf cve sipsma
#11735 ci: make test binaries faster to build sipsma
#11734 chore: add test for envfile recursion alexcb
#11732 refactor toolchain proxying kpenfound
#11731 support kernels without legacy xtables (6.17+) sipsma
#11729 finish separating content digests out; refactor ids/cache keys sipsma
#11728 AWS secret manager and parameter store secret provider kpenfound
#11726 core: add MainModule to Env shykes
#11720 internal dev cache-expert agent skill sipsma
#11714 allow container address in default pragrams and customizations kpenfound
#11708 feat: use the remote library on versioned engine instead the local one TomChv
#11685 core: ModTree infrastructure for dynamic checks shykes

PRs Opened (Notable)

PR Title Author
#11767 [WIP] remove buildkit solver sipsma
#11766 Remove dead code from integration test harness shykes
#11759 move archive to moby/go-archive tiborvass
#11753 only load toolchains in parent module kpenfound
#11748 filesync: fix .gitignore handling sipsma
#11746 Dogfood "testcontainers" pattern in test harness shykes
#11730 initial draft of agent skill for daggerizing a repo sipsma

Issues Opened

Issue Title Author
#11765 Engine tries to reuse ssh-agent that does not exist vmaffet-fast
#11751 'dagger client install go' overwrites replaced dagger.io/dagger shykes
#11750 The +ignore pragma is not always respected cbochs
#11745 Kill +defaultPath in favor of just +default kpenfound
#11744 Go generated bindings should depend on released core bindings TomChv

Discussions (Active)

# Title
#11710 Using Dagger like Testcontainers
#11683 +up
#11653 +ship
#11652 Different behavior based on "git context"

Generated from Discord + GitHub activity, Jan 22-29, 2026

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