Docker Multi-Stage Builds
Docker multi-stage build patterns for optimized images covering build separation, layer caching, security hardening, and language-specific examples.
- Difficulty
- intermediate
- Read time
- 1 min read
- Version
- v1.0.0
- Confidence
- established
- Last updated
Quick Reference
Multi-stage Docker: Separate build and runtime stages. COPY --from=builder for artifacts only. Use distroless/alpine for runtime. Non-root user. BuildKit cache mounts for deps. .dockerignore to exclude. Pin base image versions. Scan with Trivy. Final image has no build tools.
Use When
- Production Docker images
- Compiled languages (Go, Rust, Java)
- Node.js/Python with build steps
- Image size optimization
Skip When
- Simple development images
- Single-step builds
Docker Multi-Stage Builds
Docker multi-stage build patterns for optimized images covering build separation, layer caching, security hardening, and language-specific examples.