jdickey's Customised Ruby Builds

Contents

• Overview
  • IMPORTANT NOTES
    • Silent Gem Version Updates
    • Alpine Linux Versions
    • Removal of capybara-webkit and supporting json
    • Outdated Ruby and Alpine Versions No Longer Supported
  • Supported Tags
    • Logical but Nonexistent Tags
    • What? Where Are the Dockerfiles?
• Software
  • Debian Stretch
  • Alpine Linux
• Changelog
  • 0.22.0 (19 November 2019)
  • 0.21.0 (30 August 2019)
  • 0.20.0 (28 August 2019)
  • 0.19.1 (17 May 2019)
  • 0.19.0 (16 May 2019)
  • 0.18.2 (11 April 2019)
  • 0.18.1 (2 April 2019)
  • 0.18.0 (15 March 2019)
  • 0.17.2 (11 March 2019)
  • 0.17.1 (1 March 2019)
  • 0.17.0 (24 February 2019)
  • 0.16.0 (3 February 2019)
  • 0.15.1 (9 January 2019)
  • 0.15.0 (29 December 2018)
  • 0.14.2 (28 December 2018)
  • 0.14.1 (20 December 2018)
  • 0.14.0 (19 October 2018)
  • 0.13.4 (10 October 2018)
  • 0.13.3 (24 September 2018)
  • 0.13.2 (20 September 2018)
  • 0.13.1 (24 June 2018)
  • 0.13.0 (11 June 2018)
  • 0.12.0 (11 April 2018) WITHDRAWN — DO NOT USE
  • 0.11.2 (15 March 2018)
  • 0.11.1 (7 March 2018)
  • 0.11.0 (4 March 2018)
  • 0.10.0 (1 March 2018)
  • 0.9.0 (11 January 2018)
  • 0.8.0 (8 January 2018)
  • 0.7.0 (17 November 2017)
• Additional Documentation
• Legal

Overview

I often build from Ruby official base images, install additional software packages, and do some basic Ruby housekeeping (installing Bundler and making sure the system Gems are up-to-date). On a reasonably modern iMac with a decent First World internet connection, this can take about 20 minutes. Repeat this half-a-dozen times over the course of a day and you've lost two hours. As Orwell wrote, doubleplus ungood.

IMPORTANT NOTES

Silent Gem Version Updates

Image Version 0.18.2 will be the last explicitly-tagged image version which only updates Gem versions, without changes to either the list of Gems installed or the process of building these images. At least one of those two things must change to justify a new version tag going forward.

Alpine Linux Versions

Version 0.17.0 of these images includes support for Alpine Linux 3.9, the current release as of 29 January 2019. Version 0.16.0 had supported Alpine 3.8, and versions prior to that had supported Alpine 3.7. We will continue to support only the most recent stable release of Alpine Linux in our images; if that causes difficulties, please feel free to open an issue.

Removal of capybara-webkit and supporting json

With effect from Version 0.16.0, there are no longer any -qt images built (that installed the Qt window manager and the capybara and (historically) capybara-webkit Gems). Only the images previously labelled -no-qt are supported. Since there is no longer a difference between -no-qt and anything else, that segment is dropped from the image name.

This has been done because capybara-webkit has given us and countless other teams ulcers for quite some time, and our own downstream projects no longer use it (in favour of Capybara+Selenium presently, but Rubium) is firmly in the "assess" ring of our technology radar.) This also simplifies our build matrix and reduces the number of tags listed on Docker Hub.

Outdated Ruby and Alpine Versions No Longer Supported

Version 0.16.0 removes support for Ruby Version 2.5.1. The only supported 2.5.x Ruby version supported is Version 2.5.3. It also removes images based on Alpine Linux 3.7 in favour of Alpine 3.8.

Later versions of these images continue to only include the 2.6.x and 2.5.x versions of Ruby, and the Alpine Linux base OS image, that were current at the time that they were built. Using minimally-specific image tags, e.g., 2-stretch or 2.6-alpine, is recommended except for testing and troubleshooting purposes.

Supported Tags

Each image has one tag that follows the format 2.x.y-os_build, where

1. 2.x.y is the full version number of the Ruby version hosted by the image, which will be one of 2.6.3 (the current version) or 2.5.5 (the current 2.5 release);
2. os_build identifies which OS and variant the image was based on. These can be any one of
   1. stretch: Debian Stretch (9.0). This is, by far, the largest variant of the image;
   2. stretch-slim: A "slim" version of Stretch, but still considerably larger than anything built on Alpine;
   3. alpine3.9 (synonyms: alpine39 and alpine): Alpine Linux 3.9, a minimalist Linux distribution. (There is no 'slim' version of alpine; it's already the smallest of the listed images).

The latest tag identifies the latest version of Ruby (as of Febuary 2019, version 2.6.1) on the latest, non-slim version of Debian (currently stretch). It should be the default choice when you simply want the most recent supported Ruby version, but is not recommended for production use in most cases. (We recommend exploring basing your image on an alpine build for production.)

Minor-version tags such as 2.6-stretch or 2.5-alpine identify the latest supported release of that minor version of Ruby on the specified OS build. As later versions of Ruby are released and supported (e.g., a hypothetical 2.6.2 or 2.5.4), the corresponding minor-version tag will be redefined to match the new full-version-number tag.

Major-version tags (e.g., 2-stretch or 2-alpine3.9) identify the latest supported minor release of the latest supported major release of Ruby (currently 2.6.1), and are updated in a manner analogous to minor-version tags; i.e., when Ruby 2.7 is released (expected to be in December, 2019), each major-version tag will be updated to match 2.7.0 on each respective operating system (e.g., 2.7.0-stretch).

Tags which do not include a Ruby version number are built using the latest supported version of Ruby on the OS build identified by their name, e.g., stretch or alpine. This differs from latest in that latest is presently defined as always being on the latest non-slim Debian build (currently stretch).

Finally, the Alpine Linux OS build names differ from the Debian conventions in that Alpine is the only OS build that encodes (major and minor) version numbers. Hence, alpine3.9 is synonymous with alpine39 and, until a newer version of Alpine is supported by the official Ruby base images, alpine is as well. That is to say that 2.6.5-alpine3.9 and alpine (presently) reference the same image.

Logical but Nonexistent Tags

Why no tags for, e.g., 2-slim-jessie? First, support for Jessie is dead; as of September, 2018, all Debian builds are on Stretch. We use tag names intended to be consistent with those of the official Ruby Docker images; the unadorned 2 states that the tag is for the latest 2.x Ruby version. No Debian Jessie-based images should exist for any Ruby version. It is possible that some such tags were created in error and not caught prior to release on Docker Hub; if you find one, please open an issue. Thanks!

What? Where Are the Dockerfiles?

Versions of these images prior to Release 0.11.0 published Dockerfiles for each supported Ruby version/OS build variant. Release 0.11.0 and later use Docker build arguments to configure the appropriate "template" Dockerfiles instead, depending on whether a Debian or Alpine image is being built; as of Version 0.16.0, there are only two basic variants per Ruby version. These templates are:

• alpine.dockerfile;
• debian.dockerfile.

Note that these files are not complete Dockerfiles in and of themselves; they depend on build arguments to configure settings and behaviour.

Software

Debian Stretch

Jessie is dead; long live Stretch! Ancient, now-unsupported upstream official Ruby images were based on Debian Jessie; however, we no longer build Ruby images based on these no-longer-supported Ruby versions.

The following Debian packages are installed in Debian-based images of this repo:

• build-essential
• curl
• less
• nodejs
• sudo
• wget
• zsh

Alpine Linux

The following Alpine packages are installed in Alpine-based images of this repo:

• alpine-sdk
• bash
• build-base
• libressl-dev
• nodejs
• tzdata
• zsh

Changelog

0.22.0 (19 November 2019)

• Included images for Ruby 2.6.5 and Ruby 2.5.7 rather than 2.6.4 and 2.5.6.

0.21.0 (30 August 2019)

• Included images for Ruby 2.6.4 and Ruby 2.5.6 rather than 2.6.3 and 2.5.5.

0.20.0 (28 August 2019)

• Added locale settings support;
• Last build for Ruby 2.6.3 and Ruby 2.5.5. New versions have been released upstream to address security vulnerabilities, and base images are reportedly built and tagged, but as of 17 May 2019 at 15:25:00, those new base images are not available.

0.19.1 (17 May 2019)

Repairing some typo-level errors.

• Dockerfile templates no longer have obsolete Qt-related label content;
• Several minor bits of outdated-content cleanup in this README; if you see others, open an issue!

0.19.0 (16 May 2019)

Ruby 2.6.3 and 2.5.5 are the current Ruby versions supported. As has been the case since 0.18.0, no images based on previous Ruby versions are built.

0.18.2 (11 April 2019)

Refreshed with updated Gem versions; no configuration changes made.

This will be the last explicitly-tagged image version which only updates Gem versions, without changes to either the list of Gems installed or the process of building these images. At least one of those two things must change to justify a new version tag going forward.

0.18.1 (2 April 2019)

Refreshed with updated Gem versions; no configuration changes made.

0.18.0 (15 March 2019)

Ruby 2.6.2 and 2.5.3 are the only versions built. (Ruby 2.5.5 is the latest official release from ruby-lang; the automated Docker image builds typically lag by at least a day, which means that there will imminently be an 0.18.1 release of these images.)

No images based on previous Ruby versions are built. Additionally, all Alpine-based images now use Alpine Linux 3.9, since the upstream images now all support that version.

0.17.2 (11 March 2019)

Installs latest Bundler version (currently 2.0.1) with --no-document. This was previously the only Gem documentation in /usr/local/bundle/doc.

0.17.1 (1 March 2019)

Version 0.17.1

• adds a Docker image label, jdickey_ruby_image_version, to the Docker image. Its initial value is, unsurprisingly, 0.17.1;
• Adds a build of Ruby 2.6.1 on Alpine Linux 3.9 to the existing Alpine Linux 3.8 versions.

0.17.0 (24 February 2019)

Version 0.17.0 migrates Alpine images from Alpine 3.8 to 3.9. This should have no real effect on most use cases for these images.

0.16.0 (3 February 2019)

With the release of Ruby 2.6.1 and its support by the official base images, the time has come to bid farewell to Ruby 2.5.1 as a supported version. This build now supports only Ruby Versions 2.6.1, 2.6.0, and 2.5.3.

No Version 0.16.0 images include the Qt window manager or the capybara Gem, nor the Linux OS packages previously required to support them.

There are no longer any images built on Alpine 3.7. All Alpine images are based on Alpine 3.8.

0.15.1 (9 January 2019)

Our first release of the New Year is a Gem-version bump, bringing Bundler to Version 2.0.1 and Nokogiri to Version 1.10.0. No other changes have been made; importantly, Ruby 2.5.1 is still supported for you laggards.

0.15.0 (29 December 2018)

Yes, that was fast. There now are Ruby 2.6.0 official upstream images (should have waited a day); as promised in the 0.14.2 release notes, here we are.

Besides Ruby 2.6.0, this version introduces several changes to the built images; see IMPORTANT NOTES, above.

0.14.2 (28 December 2018)

We've updated Gems again (including bundler and RubyGems itself). There isn't yet an official Ruby 2.6.0 upstream image yet; that will be the base for 0.15.0 as soon as it's available.

0.14.1 (20 December 2018)

• Added "Important Notes" subsection For Versions 0.15.0 and Later; please read;
• Updated Gem versions.

0.14.0 (19 October 2018)

• Introduced images built on Ruby versions 2.5.3 and 2.4.5.
• Reworded the README to emphasise the urgency of using outdated Ruby versions only for testing.

0.13.4 (10 October 2018)

• No images based on Debian Jessie are supported as of this release;
• Installed (then-)current version of Bundler into default Gem set;
• Updated now-outdated capybara, capybara-webkit, and nokogiri Gems.

0.13.3 (24 September 2018)

• Added new jdickey_ruby_image_version label with same content as version. The latter may (should?) be overwritten by subsequent images using this as a base; the former ought not to be;
• Updated now-outdated Gem versions.

0.13.2 (20 September 2018)

• Ruby versions prior to 2.4.4 are no longer built as images. Consequently, all upstream images based on Debian support Stretch, and so all Jessie builds (as well as Alpine builds of Ruby versions prior to 2.4.4) have been dropped.

0.13.1 (24 June 2018)

• Ruby <= 2.4.4 on Debian Jessie fixed upstream (but still to be removed on or after 11 September 2018).

0.13.0 (11 June 2018)

• Corrected Qt5 library specification, eliminating Qt4.
• Simplified image-build process.
• Added deprecation notice for Ruby < 2.4.4 to this README.

0.12.0 (11 April 2018) WITHDRAWN — DO NOT USE

0.11.2 (15 March 2018)

• Corrected ordering of name tokens in Debian 'slim' images. (Fixes Issue #4.)
• Fixed some minor errors in tagging.
• Added, then commented out, building older Ruby versions on Debian Stretch. (See Issue #5.)

0.11.1 (7 March 2018)

• Added 2.5.0-alpine37 as synonymous tag for 2.5.0-alpine-3.7
• Added 2.5.0-alpine37-no-qt- as synonymous tag for 2.5.0-alpine-3.7-no-qt

0.11.0 (4 March 2018)

• BREAKING CHANGE: Slim images now named consistently with corresponding official Ruby images; e.g., rather than 2.5.0-stretch-slim, that image is now tagged 2.5.0-slim-stretch
• Rearchitected build process to no longer require a separate Dockerfile per image being built
• Made base image specs and as-generated image tag more explicit
• Added yard and yard config --gem-install-yri to -no-qt images
• Moved libxml2-dev and libxslt1-dev packages from -no-qt images to Qt/Capybara images, as they are required by Capybara rather than other -no-qt packages

0.10.0 (1 March 2018)

• Added Ruby 2.4.3 (on Debian Jessie) images
• Reworded description label
• Cleaned up package-manager command lines

0.9.0 (11 January 2018)

• Qt-included images based on -no-qt images, rather than directly on official base image
• Added LABEL metadata to built images
• Further cleanup of Dockerfiles and build scripts

0.8.0 (8 January 2018)

• Added Ruby 2.5.0 (on Debian Stretch and Alpine 3.7) images
• Improved consistency between tag names

0.7.0 (17 November 2017)

• Initial release of 2.4 (actually 2.4.2) on Debian Jessie images.

Additional Documentation

See the official Ruby Docker image docs.

Legal

All files in this repository are Copyright © 2017-2019 by Jeff Dickey, and licensed under the MIT License.

As with all Docker images, these likely also contain other software which may be under other licenses (such as Bash, etc from the base distribution, along with any direct or indirect dependencies of the primary software being contained).

As for any pre-built image usage, it is the image user's responsibility to ensure that any use of this image complies with any relevant licenses for all software contained within.