Github Container registry (ghcr.io) is not resolving <my-image>:latest

[EdmundsEcho]

Hello,

I’m able to pull my packages referencing a specific version. For instance, the following works:

        image: ghcr.io/.../frontend:1642627011
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent

However, the following does not:

        image: ghcr.io/lucivia/frontend:latest
        imagePullPolicy: Always

The kubernetes cluster reports “failed to resolve”

Events:
  Type     Reason     Age                  From               Message
  ----     ------     ----                 ----               -------
  Normal   Scheduled  2m47s                default-scheduler  Successfully assigned ingress-nginx/frontend-deployment-dc8574f9b-6fdqf to xxx-control-plane
  Normal   Pulling    88s (x4 over 2m47s)  kubelet            Pulling image "ghcr.io/.../frontend:latest"
  Warning  Failed     87s (x4 over 2m47s)  kubelet            Failed to pull image "ghcr.io/.../frontend:latest": rpc error: code = NotFound desc = failed to pull and unpack image "ghcr.io/.../frontend:latest": failed to resolve reference "ghcr.io/.../frontend:latest": ghcr.io/.../frontend:latest: not found
  Warning  Failed     87s (x4 over 2m47s)  kubelet            Error: ErrImagePull
  Warning  Failed     61s (x6 over 2m46s)  kubelet            Error: ImagePullBackOff
  Normal   BackOff    47s (x7 over 2m46s)  kubelet            Back-off pulling image "ghcr.io/.../frontend:latest"

Is the use of latest keyword supported by ghcr?

Thank you for anyone with some experience using the latest pull feature :))

- E

[airtower-luna]

In my experience it works just fine. One thing to be aware of: The latest tag isn’t automatic, you need to push it like any other tag.

[EdmundsEcho]

That’s what I was missing. For some reason, I was expecting “latest” to be a feature of the pull request; i.e., that it would pull the “latest” version of the package. To your point, “latest” is just a tag used “by convention” that I need to create.

In order to maintain package versions, I should create a copy of the package; one with the tag, one with the whatever I’m using to track the versions (in my case $GITHUB_RUN_ID). Otherwise, I would have to figure out a way to both add and remove the label to ensure only one has that “honor” of being the latest.

Is there another more conventional approach?

[airtower-luna]

You don’t need to remove the tag, if you push a new latest (or any other label) a previous one with the same name gets overwritten. What may cause issues there is if there may be multiple builds that push the tag running in parallel, and you can’t know which one will push last. 😉

Convention for container images in general is that latest points at the latest stable/release version. If the image is meant to be shared with anyone it’s worth considering what that means in your context.

[EdmundsEcho]

@airtower-luna Thank you. That is helpful and completes the understanding required to get the job done. - E