is there a mechanism to install custom packages and krew plugins during my geodesic builds?

Yes. Create your own Dockerfile and use Geodesic as your base image. We do not generally recommend building Geodesic yourself.

ah, so, editing

components/docker/platform/Dockerfile

IS the way? (that's how we did it now)

Different people put their Dockerfile in different places, but yes, editing your own Dockerfile is the way to install whatever extras you want. For example, all our customers use Atmos, but we do not ship it pre-installed in Geodesic. We install it in their custom Dockerfile.

Well, I'm using your refarch 🙂 thanks

The location of the Dockerfile in our reference architecture has changed recently, so I didn't want to confuse anyone. I should point out that Geodesic has the Cloud Posse packages package repo configured, so you can install anything from that repo via

apt-get update \
    && apt-get install \
    -y -u --allow-downgrades \
    --no-install-recommends ...

(The

--no-install-recommends

is not needed for the Cloud Posse repo, but it is good practice to include it anyway.)