$ docker run --privileged --rm tonistiigi/binfmt

“But **a-hah**,” you cry! “There's MIPS *and* PPC in that list!” You then demand, “Where’s my build of `container.npk` for them, then?”

Did you overlook the “64” in those outputs? These are for modern 64-bit versions of these CPUs, but MikroTik never shipped any 64-bit MIPS or PowerPC CPUs, not even the 100G behemoth linked above, which gets by with a 32-bit MIPSBE based CPU because it is designed as a switch, not a router, offloading nearly all traffic to the switch ASIC.

What the above command tells you is that you can build images using commands like this:
The only thing the above command tells you is that you can build images using commands like this:

    docker buildx --platform linux/mips64 …

You can do that all day long, but nothing you do will force a MIPSBE build of `container.npk` to run the resulting binaries short of including a CPU emulator in the image, [per above](#qemu).
You’re free to do that all day long, but nothing you do will force a MIPSBE build of `container.npk` to run the resulting binaries short of including a CPU emulator in the image, [per above](#qemu).

You may then point out that you don’t actually need the cross-compilation toolchain to exist in Docker proper. FOSS toolchains do exist for TILE, 32-bit PPC, MMIPS, SMIPS… Why can’t you use them to cross-compile binaries on your desktop machine and then use tools like [Buildah](https://buildah.io/) to copy those binaries into the image unchanged?

You can, but now you’ve bought several new problems:

1. Until someone actually does this and provides a compelling case to MikroTik that they should expend the effort to build `container.npk` for those old CPU designs, my sense of MikroTik’s public statements on this matter is that they have no interest in spending the engineering time. It not quite a classic chicken-and-egg situation, but without working images in hand, I don’t see a bid to make MikroTik append this task to its development pipeline succeeding.(^I base that interpretation on the hiss of radio silence I got in response to [this challenge](https://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?t=204868#p1058351).)