alt Hacker NewsYes, compression being part of the OCI image's digest was (in hindsight) a poor decision. _Technically_ OCI images allow uncompressed layers, and the layers could be included without compression (and transport compression to be used); this would allow layers to be fully reproducible. We explored some options to do this (and made some preparations; https://github.com/containerd/containerd/pull/8166), but also discovered that various implementations of registry clients didn't handle transport-compression correctly (https://github.com/distribution/distribution/pull/3754), which could result in client either pulling the full, uncompressed, content, or image validation failing.
For my registry fork/custom pull client I hash on the uncompressed content and store as compressed under the uncompressed digest. This lets me have my cake and eat it, too - compression free digests, smaller storage costs, be able to set consistent compression settings, have the ability to spend extra CPU to recompress on the backend without breaking hashes, etc. I control both pull client and registry, so it works.