Creating a container image

You can use this workflow step to create a new container image, this mostly relies on the docker/build-push-action, but sets up the environment for easy mutli-arch builds with buildx and qemu. It also logs in to the GitHub container registry allowing you to upload an image right away. To use it, add a job to your GitHub workflow calling this workflow:

# ...

jobs:

  # ...

  docker:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      # ...

      - name: Build container image
        uses: tweedegolf/build-container-image@main
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          push: ${{ github.ref == 'refs/heads/main' }}
          platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
          tags: ghcr.io/tweedegolf/example:latest

      # ...

  # ...

Workflow inputs

This workflow has several parameters that allow customizing the behavior:

Option	Required	Default
token	yes
GitHub token for logging into the ghcr container registry
tags	yes
List of image tags (newline separated) for the resulting container image
push	no	false
If true, the image will be pushed to the registry
platforms	no	""
Comma separated list of platforms to build the image for, i.e. linux/amd64,linux/arm64. If left empty, will only build for the native platform.
context	no	.
Context directory for the container image build
build-args	no	""
List of build arguments (newline separated) to be inserted in the container image build
file	no	Dockerfile
Name of the dockerfile to build
no-cache	no	true
Set to false to enable caching of docker layers
pull	no	true
Pull base images from the registry when not available locally

Example usage

Below, you will find a working example where we either just build (and not push) a container image on a pull request, and we fully build and push a container on the main branch, these two require separate permissions. We'll also add a build matrix to allow multiple images to be generated:

• .github/workflows/docker.yml

  name: Docker
  
  on:
    workflow_call:
  
  jobs:
    docker:
      strategy:
        matrix:
          include:
            - version: trixie
              latest: false
              alt: testing
            - version: bookworm
              latest: true
              alt: stable
            - version: bullseye
              latest: false
              alt: oldstable
      steps:
        - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        - name: Build container image
          uses: tweedegolf/build-container-image@main
          with:
            token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
            push: ${{ github.ref == 'refs/heads/main' }}
            platforms: "linux/amd64,linux/arm64"
            build-args: |
              DEBIAN_VERSION=${{matrix.version}}
            tags: |
              ghcr.io/tweedegolf/debian:${{matrix.version}}
              ghcr.io/tweedegolf/debian:${{matrix.alt}}
              ${{ matrix.latest && 'ghcr.io/tweedegolf/debian:latest' || '' }}

  This file will be re-used by the two workflows below. As such we only trigger it on workflow_call. Note how we use a matrix to build multiple images. Of course for this workflow to run we'll also need a Dockerfile to be built, but that has been omitted in this example.

• .github/workflows/build-push.yml

  name: Build and push
  
  permissions:
    contents: read
    packages: write
  
  on:
    push:
      branches:
        - main
    schedule:
      - cron: '30 2 * * SUN'
  
  jobs:
    build-and-push:
      uses: ./.github/workflows/docker.yml

  This build and push workflow for the main branch also runs on a schedule every week to keep the image up to date. Note how we require package write permission in this workflow.

• .github/workflows/check.yml

  name: Checks
  
  permissions:
    contents: read
  
  on:
    pull_request:
  
  jobs:
    build:
      uses: ./.github/workflows/docker.yml
      secrets: inherit

  The checks workflow will just need read permissions for the repository with no write permissions required. We only run it for a pull request.