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Here’s when and why we will update build images on CircleCI 2.0 and CircleCI 1.0.

CircleCI Images


Docker Convenience Images

Docs Page - updates within 48 hours - CircleCI 2.0 enables the use of Docker images as an environment for CI builds. Some users don’t want to make custom images or the images they use are missing tools that would be useful in CI environments. This is where convenience images come in. These images are based off of the official Docker Library images. Since we take these images and add common tools (such as git and tar) as well as browser tools (chrome, selenium, etc), the update frequency is based on the upstream images. We’ll typically have image updates 24-48 hours after the Docker Library versions.

Ubuntu 14.04

Docs Page - updates quarterly - CircleCI 1.0 uses extremely large LXC images. This is because we have MANY languages and all of their related tools all in one image. Updating this image can occasionally cause users’ builds to break if we remove a software version they were using. This is why we recommend switching to CircleCI 2.0, where this can no longer happen. To minimize breakage, the CircleCI 1.0 Ubuntu 14.04 image will be updated approximately once a quarter (every 3 months). Software that doesn’t already exist in the image will not be added. Only new major versions of existing software will be added.

Ubuntu 12.04

Docs Page - updates never - This image is a large, LXC image for CircleCI 1.0 similar to the Ubuntu 14.04 image. Canonical, the company producing Ubuntu, has End-of-Life’d (EOL) Ubuntu 12.04. This means there will be no more bug fixes or security updates. We, in turn, have EOL’d our support for the image as well. We suggest switching over to CircleCI 2.0 instead. If you have to remain on CircleCI 1.0 for whatever reason, you can switch to the Ubuntu 14.04 image for continued updates. Canonical’s EOL announcement can be found here.

Feedback & Contribution

The CircleCI 2.0 Docker Convenience Images came into fruition with the launch of 2.0. They’re still fairly new and open-source. If you’d like to browse the source-code for the Dockerfiles, report bugs, or fix issues, you can do so at the GitHub Project.

If you’re new to CircleCI 2.0, Docker, or our images specifically, you can ask questions, see examples, and discuss workflows on CircleCI Discuss.

Lastly, you can also use CircleCI Discuss to share your public Docker images or CircleCI config snippets that you think can help others. We’d love to see what you’re working on.