Reduce nodejs image size by removing /nodejs/include directory

[pkwarren]

Describe the bug
Distroless nodejs images currently include the /nodejs/include directory (55.4M). A large portion of this is /nodejs/include/node/openssl (53.9M) which includes include files for multiple architectures and variants.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

• Pull gcr.io/distroless/nodejs20-debian12:latest or gcr.io/distroless/nodejs20-debian12:debug images:

gcr.io/distroless/nodejs20-debian12                latest            7fc7b55da7d5   N/A              181MB
gcr.io/distroless/nodejs20-debian12                debug             8f8496cf32e2   N/A              183MB

• Examine the size of the /nodejs/include directory within the container. Note that it makes up ~30% of the overall image size even though a compiler is not shipped in the image to use the include files.

Expected behavior
Either the nodejs images should omit the /nodejs/include directory or provide an image with a different tag to allow users to reduce the size of their nodejs images.

Console Output

$ docker run --rm --entrypoint sh -it gcr.io/distroless/nodejs20-debian12:debug
/ # du -sh /nodejs/include/
55.4M	/nodejs/include/

Additional context
n/a

[loosebazooka]

Sounds reasonable. Can you point to some documentation about the include directory?

[omBratteng]

@loosebazooka I have created a draft #1597