An Image is an ordered collection of root filesystem changes and the corresponding execution parameters for use within a container runtime. This specification outlines the format of these filesystem changes and corresponding parameters and describes how to create and use them for use with a container runtime and execution tool.
This version of the image specification was adopted starting in Docker 1.12.
This specification uses the following terms:
Here is an example image JSON file:
{
"created": "2015-10-31T22:22:56.015925234Z",
"author": "Alyssa P. Hacker <alyspdev@example.com>",
"architecture": "amd64",
"os": "linux",
"config": {
"User": "alice",
"Memory": 2048,
"MemorySwap": 4096,
"CpuShares": 8,
"ExposedPorts": {
"8080/tcp": {}
},
"Env": [
"PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin",
"FOO=docker_is_a_really",
"BAR=great_tool_you_know"
],
"Entrypoint": [
"/bin/my-app-binary"
],
"Cmd": [
"--foreground",
"--config",
"/etc/my-app.d/default.cfg"
],
"Volumes": {
"/var/job-result-data": {},
"/var/log/my-app-logs": {},
},
"WorkingDir": "/home/alice",
},
"rootfs": {
"diff_ids": [
"sha256:c6f988f4874bb0add23a778f753c65efe992244e148a1d2ec2a8b664fb66bbd1",
"sha256:5f70bf18a086007016e948b04aed3b82103a36bea41755b6cddfaf10ace3c6ef"
],
"type": "layers"
},
"history": [
{
"created": "2015-10-31T22:22:54.690851953Z",
"created_by": "/bin/sh -c #(nop) ADD file:a3bc1e842b69636f9df5256c49c5374fb4eef1e281fe3f282c65fb853ee171c5 in /"
},
{
"created": "2015-10-31T22:22:55.613815829Z",
"created_by": "/bin/sh -c #(nop) CMD [\"sh\"]",
"empty_layer": true
}
]
}
Note that image JSON files produced by Docker don't contain formatting whitespace. It has been added to this example for clarity.
Any extra fields in the Image JSON struct are considered implementation specific and should be ignored by any implementations which are unable to interpret them.
An example of creating an Image Filesystem Changeset follows.
An image root filesystem is first created as an empty directory. Here is the initial empty directory structure for the a changeset using the randomly-generated directory name c3167915dc9d (actual layer DiffIDs are generated based on the content).
c3167915dc9d/
Files and directories are then created:
c3167915dc9d/
etc/
my-app-config
bin/
my-app-binary
my-app-tools
The c3167915dc9d directory is then committed as a plain Tar archive with entries for the following files:
etc/my-app-config bin/my-app-binary bin/my-app-tools
To make changes to the filesystem of this container image, create a new directory, such as f60c56784b83, and initialize it with a snapshot of the parent image's root filesystem, so that the directory is identical to that of c3167915dc9d. NOTE: a copy-on-write or union filesystem can make this very efficient:
f60c56784b83/
etc/
my-app-config
bin/
my-app-binary
my-app-tools
This example change is going add a configuration directory at /etc/my-app.d which contains a default config file. There's also a change to the my-app-tools binary to handle the config layout change. The f60c56784b83 directory then looks like this:
f60c56784b83/
etc/
my-app.d/
default.cfg
bin/
my-app-binary
my-app-tools
This reflects the removal of /etc/my-app-config and creation of a file and directory at /etc/my-app.d/default.cfg. /bin/my-app-tools has also been replaced with an updated version. Before committing this directory to a changeset, because it has a parent image, it is first compared with the directory tree of the parent snapshot, f60c56784b83, looking for files and directories that have been added, modified, or removed. The following changeset is found:
Added: /etc/my-app.d/default.cfg Modified: /bin/my-app-tools Deleted: /etc/my-app-config
A Tar Archive is then created which contains only this changeset: The added and modified files and directories in their entirety, and for each deleted item an entry for an empty file at the same location but with the basename of the deleted file or directory prefixed with .wh.. The filenames prefixed with .wh. are known as “whiteout” files. NOTE: For this reason, it is not possible to create an image root filesystem which contains a file or directory with a name beginning with .wh.. The resulting Tar archive for f60c56784b83 has the following entries:
/etc/my-app.d/default.cfg /bin/my-app-tools /etc/.wh.my-app-config
Any given image is likely to be composed of several of these Image Filesystem Changeset tar archives.
There is also a format for a single archive which contains complete information about an image, including:
For example, here's what the full archive of library/busybox is (displayed in tree format):
. ├── 47bcc53f74dc94b1920f0b34f6036096526296767650f223433fe65c35f149eb.json ├── 5f29f704785248ddb9d06b90a11b5ea36c534865e9035e4022bb2e71d4ecbb9a │ ├── VERSION │ ├── json │ └── layer.tar ├── a65da33792c5187473faa80fa3e1b975acba06712852d1dea860692ccddf3198 │ ├── VERSION │ ├── json │ └── layer.tar ├── manifest.json └── repositories
There is a directory for each layer in the image. Each directory is named with a 64 character hex name that is deterministically generated from the layer information. These names are not necessarily layer DiffIDs or ChainIDs. Each of these directories contains 3 files:
VERSION - The schema version of the json filejson - The legacy JSON metadata for an image layer. In this version of the image specification, layers don't have JSON metadata, but in version 1, they did. A file is created for each layer in the v1 format for backward compatibility.layer.tar - The Tar archive of the filesystem changeset for an image layer.Note that this directory layout is only important for backward compatibility. Current implementations use the paths specified in manifest.json.
The content of the VERSION files is simply the semantic version of the JSON metadata schema:
1.0
The repositories file is another JSON file which describes names/tags:
{
"busybox":{
"latest":"5f29f704785248ddb9d06b90a11b5ea36c534865e9035e4022bb2e71d4ecbb9a"
}
}
Every key in this object is the name of a repository, and maps to a collection of tag suffixes. Each tag maps to the ID of the image represented by that tag. This file is only used for backwards compatibility. Current implementations use the manifest.json file instead.
The manifest.json file provides the image JSON for the top-level image, and optionally for parent images that this image was derived from. It consists of an array of metadata entries:
[
{
"Config": "47bcc53f74dc94b1920f0b34f6036096526296767650f223433fe65c35f149eb.json",
"RepoTags": ["busybox:latest"],
"Layers": [
"a65da33792c5187473faa80fa3e1b975acba06712852d1dea860692ccddf3198/layer.tar",
"5f29f704785248ddb9d06b90a11b5ea36c534865e9035e4022bb2e71d4ecbb9a/layer.tar"
]
}
]
There is an entry in the array for each image.
The Config field references another file in the tar which includes the image JSON for this image.
The RepoTags field lists references pointing to this image.
The Layers field points to the filesystem changeset tars.
An optional Parent field references the imageID of the parent image. This parent must be part of the same manifest.json file.
This file shouldn't be confused with the distribution manifest, used to push and pull images.
Generally, implementations that support this version of the spec will use the manifest.json file if available, and older implementations will use the legacy */json files and repositories.