How to Inject Variables into Docker image in build time without modifying the Dockerfile

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How to Inject Variables into Docker image in build time without modifying the Dockerfile

 

We have a requirement wherein we need to modify the specific Dockerfile with the build information and we make use of string replace operations like SED to modify the data in Dockerfile, But we can make use of the docker build time arguments to achieve the results efficiently.

Here’s a snippet of Dockerfile

FROM ubuntu:17.04
LABEL maintainer="vamshi" version="1.0.0" description="JRUBY Docker image"
WORKDIR /app
ARG JRUBY_VER 9.2.11.1
ENV JRUBY_VER ${JRUBY_VER}
ADD https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/jruby/jruby-dist/${JRUBY_VER}/jruby-dist-${JRUBY_VER}-bin.tar.gz .

We now build this Dockerfile as follows passing the –build-arg:

# docker build --build-arg JRUBY_VER=9.2.8.0 -t jruby:v2  -f ./Dockerfile .

Here we have passed in the build arguments of –build-arg the JRUBY_VER=9.2.8.0 and this then assigns the Argument to the ENV and passed it to ADD command which downloads tar.gz.

When run the command without any build-args it readsup the predefined ARG JRUBY_VER 9.2.11.1 from the Dockerfile.

Conclusion:
Another best usecase is while you have a continuous Docker build pipeline system and want to pass the build time arguments on user input, Its best to use ARG statements inside while writing your Dockerfile

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