Docker Images, Layers & the Dockerfile

~12 min read

How a Dockerfile becomes a versioned, cacheable image, and why layer order matters for build speed.

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Key points

  • Each Dockerfile instruction creates a cacheable layer
  • Order instructions from least-frequently-changing to most-frequently-changing for faster builds
  • An image is immutable layers; a container adds one writable layer on top
  • Images are tagged (e.g. myapp:1.2.0) and pushed to a registry like ECR for orchestrators to pull