Tag

Skaffold supports the following policies for tagging images:

• gitCommit: use git commit IDs as tags
• sha256: use sha256 hashes of contents as tags
• envTemplate: use values of environment variables as tags
• dateTime: use date and time values as tags

The tag policy is specified in the tagPolicy field of the build section of the Skaffold configuration file, skaffold.yaml.

For a detailed discussion on Skaffold configuration, see Skaffold Concepts and skaffold.yaml References.

gitCommit: uses Git commit IDs as tags

gitCommit is the default tag policy of Skaffold: if you do not specify the tagPolicy field in the build section, Skaffold will use Git information to tag artifacts.

The gitCommit tagger will look at the Git workspace that contains the artifact’s context directory and tag according to those rules:

• If the workspace is on a Git tag, that tag is used to tag images
• If the workspace is on a Git commit, the short commit is used
• It the workspace has uncommited changes, a -dirty suffix is appended to the image tag

Example

The following build section instructs Skaffold to build a Docker image gcr.io/k8s-skaffold/example with the gitCommit tag policy specified explicitly:

build:
  tagPolicy:
    gitCommit: {}
  artifacts:
  - image: gcr.io/k8s-skaffold/example

Configuration

gitCommit tag policy features no options.

sha256: uses Sha256 hashes of contents as tags

sha256 is a content-based tagging strategy: it uses the Sha256 hash of your built image as the tag of the Docker image.

Example

The following build section instructs Skaffold to build a Docker image gcr.io/k8s-skaffold/example with the sha256 tag policy:

build:
  tagPolicy:
    sha256: {}
  artifacts:
  - image: gcr.io/k8s-skaffold/example

Configuration

sha256 tag policy features no options.

envTemplate: uses values of environment variables as tags

envTemplate allows you to use environment variables in tags. This policy requires that you specify a tag template, where part of template can be replaced with values of environment variables during the tagging process.

The following build section, for example, instructs Skaffold to build a Docker image gcr.io/k8s-skaffold/example with the envTemplate tag policy. The tag template is {{.IMAGE_NAME}}:{{.FOO}}; when Skaffold finishes building the image, it will check the list of available environment variables in the system for the variable FOO, and use its value to tag the image.

Example

build:
  tagPolicy:
    envTemplate:
      template: "{{.IMAGE_NAME}}:{{.FOO}}"
  artifacts:
  - image: gcr.io/k8s-skaffold/example

Suppose the value of the FOO environment variable is v1, the image built will be gcr.io/k8s-skaffold/example:v1.

Configuration

The tag template uses the Go Programming Language Syntax. As showcased in the example, envTemplate tag policy features one required parameter, template, which is the tag template to use. To learn more about templating support in Skaffold.yaml see Templated fields

dateTime: uses data and time values as tags

dateTime uses the time when Skaffold starts building artifacts as the tag. You can choose which format and timezone Skaffold should use. By default, Skaffold uses the time format 2006-01-02_15-04-05.999_MST and the local timezone.

Example

The following build section, for example, instructs Skaffold to build a Docker image gcr.io/k8s-skaffold/example with the dateTime tag policy:

build:
  tagPolicy:
    dateTime:
      format: "2006-01-02_15-04-05.999_MST"
      timezone: "Local"
  artifacts:
  - image: gcr.io/k8s-skaffold/example
# The tagPolicy section above is equal to
# tagPolicy:
#   dateTime: {}

Suppose current time is 15:04:09.999 January 2nd, 2006 and current time zone is MST (US Mountain Standard Time), the image built will be gcr.io/k8s-skaffold/example:2006-01-02_15-04-05.999_MST.

Configuration

You can learn more about what time format and time zone you can use in Go Programming Language Documentation: Time package/Format Function and Go Programming Language Documentation: Time package/LoadLocation Function respectively. As showcased in the example, dateTime tag policy features two optional parameters: format and timezone.