'latest' version of images?

[eproxus]

I'm planning to do a PR bumping the Ubuntu and Debian versions of the images to the latest tagged versions (for security updates, and to possible make them smaller). Before doing that, I'm wondering if it is possible to add latest version of those images as well (or if it doesn't make sense for the build system or the intention behind these images)?

[halostatue]

As an outside observer, elixir:*debian-bookworm-latest would break the guarantee that a given tag does not change. We use docker-lock and switched to these images because the official Elixir images would randomly change because of an upstream behind-the-scenes modification.

I would not be in favour of this, at least for these images. If we had elixir:dev-*-latest (making it clear that these images aren't intended for production), I think it would be better.

[eproxus]

@halostatue It's a good point. Aren't latest tags normally "mutable" in that sense on Docker Hub? So it is kind of implied that "latest" will change?

[halostatue]

That is true, but part of what I see from the Docker images is the "strong" promise that the tags don't change. It's one of the main reasons to use these images over the "official" images, IMO.

Where I work we have some (minimal, but present) additional verification that needs to be done when we upgrade versions of pretty much everything, even when provided by dependabot.

[wojtekmach]

Thanks for bringing this up. As you all alluded to, the whole reason behind this project is to avoid mutable tags and we don't intend to change that.

These images are PITA to search for (Docker Hub being pretty slow and not that easy to use in my opinion) so if there is a way to make that easier that would help. Perhaps it's possible for a community-maintained example.com where FROM example.com/elixir:latest "redirects" to a hexpm elixir one?