Application versioning

So far, throughout every Jenkins build, we have created a new Docker image, pushed it into the Docker registry, and used the latest version throughout the process. However, such a solution has at least three disadvantages:

• If, during the Jenkins build, after the acceptance tests, someone pushes a new version of the image, then we can end up releasing the untested version.
• We always push an image that's named in the same way so that, effectively, it is overwritten in the Docker registry.
• It's very hard to manage images without versions just by using their hashed-style IDs.

What is the recommended way of managing Docker image versions alongside the CD process? In this section, we'll look at the different versioning strategies and learn how to create versions in the Jenkins pipeline.

Versioning strategies

There are different ways to version applications.

Let's discuss the...