Re:Alpine 3.10 Released
by benburleson on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @04:47PM
(#20227169)
I think semvar would say `3` means the latest of the major version 3, no matter the minor version.
Latest of anything is RARELY stable. It's stable until someone hits a critical bug in the new release, then there's a new version, but your image is still running the older version. That's why we invented the concept of LTS tracks.
> I think the problem with specifying just 'apline:3' is that it is an ambiguous statement.
It is not ambiguous in Docker Hub land. It's a very widely used convention that means "give me the highest 3.x.y"
It's not ambiguous. As noted by the parent of the comment you're replying to, this is standard practice with Docker images/tags.
Personally, I prefer to specify even the patch level to avoid any kind of surprise, but I can understand why some people would want to be able to specify just the major release.
I think the problem with specifying just 'apline:3' is that it is an ambiguous statement. Do you want alpine:3.0? Or do you want the latest in the alpine:3.x line?
I think either using 'latest' or specifying a particular point release is what you'd expect.
Edit:
> [... ]people do alpine:latest in their Dockerfiles, cross their fingers, and hope for the best.
What are you crossing your fingers for? alpine:latest should be the latest stable, and should work as intended.