This document describes the tagging patterns and policies that are used for the official .NET container images. .NET tags are intended to closely match the tagging patterns used by Official Images on Docker Hub. Please log an issue if you encounter problems using .NET images or applying these tagging patterns.
Complete tag lists:
The terms "fixed version" and "floating version" are used throughout. They are defined in Tag policies.
These tags reference an image for a single platform (e.g. "Linux Arm64" or "Windows x64").
These "fixed version" tags reference an image with a specific Major.Minor.Patch
.NET version for a specific operating system and architecture.
Examples:
6.0.32-jammy-amd64
6.0.32-jammy-arm64v8
6.0.32-nanoserver-ltsc2022
8.0.7-alpine3.20-arm64v8
8.0.7-bookworm-slim-arm32v7
These "floating version" tags reference an image with a specific Major.Minor
(with latest patch) .NET version for a specific operating system and architecture.
Examples:
6.0-jammy-arm64v8
6.0-jammy-amd64
6.0-nanoserver-ltsc2022
8.0-alpine3.20-arm64v8
8.0-bookworm-slim-arm32v7
These tags reference images for multiple platforms.
They include:
- Debian, unless specified (like
8.0-alpine
). - All supported architectures.
Note
Since .NET 8, these multi-platform tags specifically exclude all Windows versions due to containerd
's platform matching algorithm for Windows hosts.
Please see #4492 (Switch multi-platform tags to Linux only) for more context. If you are using Windows, you will need to explicitly specify an OS Version with a single-platform tag like so:
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:8.0-nanoserver-ltsc2022
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:8.0-nanoserver-1809
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:8.0-windowsservercore-ltsc2019
FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:8.0-windowsservercore-ltsc2022
These "fixed version" tags reference an image with a specific Major.Minor.Patch
.NET version, for a specific operating system, while architecture will be chosen based on the requesting environment.
Examples:
6.0.32-jammy
8.0.7-alpine3.20
These "floating version" tags reference an image with a specific Major.Minor
(with latest patch) .NET version, for a specific operating system, while architecture will be chosen based on the requesting environment.
Examples:
6.0-alpine3.20
8.0-jammy
These "floating version" tags reference an image with a specific Major.Minor
(with latest patch) .NET version, for the latest Alpine version, while architecture will be chosen based on the requesting environment.
Examples:
6.0-alpine
8.0-alpine
Note
- New versions of Alpine will be published with version-specific tags (e.g.
6.0-alpine3.20
). - Floating tag (e.g.
6.0-alpine
) will be updated with the new Alpine version a month later. - Tag changes will be announced so that users know when the tags they want are available.
These "fixed version" tags reference an image with a specific Major.Minor.Patch
.NET version, while operating system and architecture will be chosen based on the requesting environment.
Examples:
6.0.32
8.0.7
These "floating version" tags reference an image with a specific Major.Minor
(with latest patch) .NET version, while operating system and architecture will be chosen based on the requesting environment.
Examples:
6.0
8.0
Starting with 8.0, .NET offers several image variants that provide different features for the size-focused OSes, Alpine, Azure Linux, and Ubuntu Chiseled.
You can use these variants by appending the variant name (e.g. extra
, chiseled
) to the OS name.
Examples:
8.0-noble-chiseled
8.0.7-noble-chiseled-extra
8.0.7-alpine3.20-extra
For more information, see the Image Variants documentation.
These "floating version" latest
tag references an image with the latest Major.Minor.Patch
.NET version, while operating system and architecture will be chosen based on the requesting environment.
Note
- The
latest
tag references the latest stable release. - In the
nightly
image repo, it may reference the latest preview release.
The following policies are used for the tag patterns we use.
"Fixed version" tags reference an image with a specific Major.Minor.Patch
.NET version.
Examples:
6.0.32
8.0.7-alpine3.20
Note
- These tags are considered fixed tags since they reference a specific .NET patch version.
- They are updated in response to base image updates (like a Debian base image) for the supported life of the image (typically one month).
- The .NET components within the image will not be updated.
- At times, components of .NET images like PowerShell or MinGit may require updates out of band with .NET releases in order to fix critical bugs or vulnerabilities. If this happens, new images will be created with a
-1
suffix appended to the fixed tag so that you can roll back to the previous fixed tag if necessary. The same practice will repeat itself if necessary (with-2
and then-3
tags).
"Floating version" tags references an image with a specific Major.Minor
.NET version, but float on patch updates.
Examples:
6.0
8.0-alpine3.20
Note
- These tags are considered floating tags since they do not reference a specific .NET patch version.
- They are updated in response to base image updates (like a Debian base image) for the supported life of the .NET release.
- The .NET components within the image will be updated, which typically occurs on Patch Tuesday.
Version-specific operating system tags reference an image with a specific OS version, but floats on OS patch updates. See Supported Platforms for the list of supported operating systems.
Examples:
6.0-jammy
8.0-alpine3.20
Note
- These tags are updated in response to base image updates (like an Ubuntu base image) for the supported life of the .NET release.
- Digest pinning is required to request a specific patch of an operating system (e.g.
mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/runtime@sha256:4d3d5a5131a0621509ab8a75f52955f2d0150972b5c5fb918e2e59d4cb9a9823
). - If an image is only available for one operating system, then the operating system will be omitted from the tag.
- For Debian and Ubuntu images, release codenames are used instead of version numbers.
.NET produces several appliance images containing useful diagnostic tools and applications:
These appliance images provide value based on the .NET apps they include. Their base operating system is an implementation detail and should not affect the intended use or behavior of these images. They use distroless operating systems whenever possible, further reducing the importance of the base image OS. These images may receive base image OS upgrades in the middle of major or minor version releases, provided this doesn't cause any breaking changes to the image's functionality. As such, these images may have tags that don't specify an OS version, or in some cases won't even refer to an OS at all.
For Windows, amd64
is the only architecture supported and is excluded from the tag name.
Each tag will be supported for the lifetime of the .NET and OS version referenced by the tag, unless further restricted according to platform support policy.
When an OS version reaches End-of-Life (EOL), its tags will no longer be maintained.
When a .NET version reaches EOL, its tags will continue to be maintained (rebuilt for base image updates) until the next .NET servicing date (typically on "Patch Tuesday", the 2nd Tuesday of the month).
Once a tag is no longer maintained, it will be considered unsupported, will no longer be updated. Unsupported tags will continue to exist in the container registry to prevent breaking any references to it.
In the event that a change is needed to the tagging patterns used, all tags for the previous pattern will continue to be supported for their original lifetime. They will however be removed from the documentation. Announcements will be posted when any tagging policy changes are made.