Docker V2 Github Action is Now GA

Docker is happy to announce the GA of our V2 Github Action. We’ve been working with @crazy-max over the last few months along with getting feedback from the wider community on how we can improve our existing Github Action. We have now moved from our single action to a clearer division and advanced set of options that not only allow you to just build & push but also support features like multiple architectures and build cache.

The big change with the advent of our V2 action is also the expansion of the number of actions that Docker is providing on Github. This more modular approach and the power of Github Actions has allowed us to make the minimal UX changes to the original action and add a lot more functionality.

We still have our more meta build/push action which does not actually require all of these preconfiguration steps and can still be used to deliver the same workflow we had with the previous workflow! To Upgrade the only changes are that we have split out the login to a new step and also now have a step to setup our builder. 

  -
        name: Setup Docker Buildx
        uses: docker/[email protected]

This step is setting up our builder, this is the tool we are going to use to build our Docker image. 

This means our full Github Action is now: 

name: ci
 
on:
 push:
   branches: main
 
jobs:
 main:
   runs-on: ubuntu-latest
   steps:
     -
       name: Setup Docker Buildx
       uses: docker/[email protected]
     -
       name: Login to DockerHub
       uses: docker/[email protected]
       with:
         username: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_USERNAME }}
         password: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_TOKEN }}
     -
       name: Build and push
       id: docker_build
       uses: docker/[email protected]
       with:
         push: true
         tags: bengotch/samplepython:latest

Let’s now look at some of the more advanced features we have unlocked by adding in this step and the new QEMU option.

Multi platform

By making use of BuildKit we now have access to multi-architecture builds, this allows us to build images targeted at more than one platform and also build Arm images.

To do this, we will need to add in our QEMU step: 

       name: Set up QEMU
       uses: docker/[email protected]

And then within our build & push step we will need to specify out platform to use: 

-
       name: Build and push
       uses: docker/[email protected]
       with:
         context: .
         file: ./Dockerfile
         platforms: linux/386,linux/amd64,linux/arm/v6,linux/arm/v7,linux/arm64,linux/ppc64le,linux/s390x
         push: true
         tags: |
           bengotch/app:latest

Cache Registry 

To make use of caching to speed up my builds I can now make use of the 

name: ci
 
on:
 push:
   branches: master
 
jobs:
 registry-cache:
   runs-on: ubuntu-latest
   steps:
     -
       name: Set up Docker Buildx
       uses: docker/[email protected]
     -
       name: Login to DockerHub
       uses: docker/[email protected]
       with:
         username: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_USERNAME }}
         password: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_TOKEN }}
     -
       name: Build and push
       uses: docker/[email protected]
       with:
         push: true
         tags: user/app:latest
         cache-from: type=registry,ref=user/app:latest
         cache-to: type=inline

To see more examples of the best practices for using our latest version of the Github Action check out Chads example repo
https://github.com/metcalfc/docker-action-examples. You can make use of the features in here or some of the more advanced features we can now offer with the V2 action such as push to multiple registries, use of a local registry for e2e test, export an image to the Docker client and more! 

To learn more about the changes to our Github Action, have a read through our updated usage documentation or check out our blog post on the best practices with Docker and Github Actions. If you have questions or feedback on the changes from V1 to V2 please raise tickets on our repo or our public roadmap