This article explains Liferay's DXP docker image versioning format, image tag types and their implications. Liferay DXP docker images can be found on Docker Hub here.
Anatomy of an Image Version
{Liferay DXP Major/Minor Version}-{Liferay Release Type}-{Image Version}-{Build Time and Date}
Liferay DXP Major/Minor Version
For example 7.4.13. The 7.4 refers to the major version while the .13 refers to the minor.
Changes to the major Liferay version (e.g. "7.3.x" to "7.4.x") are major version changes that require portal schema version upgrade processes and module schema version upgrade processes using the DB Upgrade Tool.
Changes in the minor version (e.g. "7.4.10" to "7.4.13") are version changes in the Community Edition which contain portal schema version upgrade processes and module schema version upgrade processes using the DB Upgrade Tool.
Liferay Release Type
The part of the tag name that follows the Liferay major/minor version is the release type. In general changes in the release type are changes to Liferay on the same major version (i.e. changes to the patch level) and include bug fixes and product improvements. These Updates contain required and optional module version schema upgrade processes (Upgrade Processes for Fix Pack in DXP 7.3 and Above). The format of this tag name part is following the naming conventions of the particular release type in subject.
Docker Image Version
The docker image version will have a major version, minor version, and patch version (d3.0.12).
{major.minor.patches}
- Updates to the major version (d2 to d3) include breaking changes to the docker image. Documentation should be consulted when updating to avoid major issues. For example, an OS change from Apline to Ubuntu would cause the major version of the Docker Image to change.
- Updates to the minor version are backward compatible improvements such as adding a new library to the image.
- Finally, changes to the third part of the docker image version (d3.0.10 to d3.0.12) refer to bug fixes in the docker image typically for the scripts included with the image.
- The docker image changelog can be reviewed here.
Build Time and Date
When an image tag has a string of numbers appended to the end this signifies the build date and time of that image. For example in the tag "7.4.13-u20-d3.0.11-20220414060125", 20220414060125 is the build date and time. To be precise, the numbers are read from left to right as follows: year (2022), month (04), day (14), hour (06), minute (01), second (25).
When an image tag has no date/time, it will only have the Liferay major version and the release type in the tag. This will always point to the most recently published image (highest build time and docker image version) with that same Liferay version and release type.
For example, if the image tag is "7.4.13-u20" it points to the most recently published version of 7.4.13-u20.
Note: Though the image tags without timestamps point to the most recently published versions, due to caching, the Cloud Console will only pull the latest version the first time it is deployed. Subsequent deployments will use the cache to deploy the same version as the previous deployment.
Understanding the 'latest' Tag
Images without the standard tags discussed above will use the 'latest' tag. The latest tag is assigned to the latest DXP update images. For example, if the most recently published update for 7.4 was u25, the image with the latest tag will be the same as the image tagged 7.4.13-u25.
Please use discretion when using the latest tag and be sure it is the version you need, or that the latest tag is being used for testing purposes and the exact version is not important. To check the current version using the 'latest' tag, please check the bundles.yml file.
Supplementary Images
Liferay will support supplementary images (e.g. job-runner) which are connected to a supported DXP version.
Example: In the event that a JDK version is no longer supported for DXP, the same deprecation will be applied to the supplementary images as well.