Docker Registries

Learn how to connect your Docker Registry to Codefresh

Codefresh enables you to integrate with several Docker container registries, including (but not limited to):

For a different registry choose to configure using the Other option.

The registries can either be public or private.

General Configuration

To configure your registries go to your Account Configuration, by clicking on Account Settings on the left sidebar. On the first section called Integrations click the Configure button next to Docker Registry.

Add a new registry configuration from the drop down.

Each configuration must be given a unique name, which you can later reference in a codefresh.yml file.

Fallback Registry

Codefresh has a feature that allows users to designate a Fallback Registry for docker integrations. If a Codefresh pipeline attempts to pull an image and that image fails for any reason (authorization issue, the registry server is down, etc.), a retry mechanism will attempt to pull it successfully. If this mechanism fails, the Fallback Registry feature provides the opportunity to pull the image from a different registry you have specified.

To define the Fallback Registry, go to Account Settings, Integrations, and select configure for Docker Registries. In the list of registries, edit the integration. Under Advanced Options, you will see a field labeled as Fallback Registry. Select the integration name you’d like to use as your Fallback Registry and then save the integration. You can also specify a Fallback Registry when creating a new integration as long as another integration exists.

Using an optional repository prefix

Codefresh allows you to setup globally for each supported Registry a prefix string for your Docker images.

This is handy for registries that require a prefix (usually the name of an organization or repository) as you can set it once, instead of having each pipeline using the prefix by itself.

See more details at pushing Docker images

Pushing an image

Once your registry configuration is all set up you can start pushing your images to it.

In a push step you can place your registry configuration name in the registry field

codefresh.yml

push_step:
  type: push
  description: Free text description
  candidate: ${{build_step}}
  tag: ${{CF_BRANCH}}
  registry: your-registry-configuration-name

For more details see the the image pushing example.

Internal caching registry

You can also select a single registry that will serve as your caching registry.

You cannot select Dockerhub as a caching registry, because it has very strict requirements for naming images, and our caching mechanism needs capabilities which are not possible with Dockerhub.

Codefresh will efficiently use that registry to perform advanced caching logic for your builds

Codefresh will automatically examine the stored metadata to decide which past image is most relevant for caching purposes
Codefresh will automatically pull images from this registry for cache purposes
Codefresh will automatically use that registry for distributed Docker layer caching to make your Docker builds faster

We give you the ability to define a separate registry for caching purposes for the following scenarios

You don’t want extra traffic to be sent to your main deployment registry. Maybe you want to avoid bandwidth/storage limits in your production registry
You have lots of build steps in pipelines with intermediate docker images that you are certain you don’t need outside of the pipeline itself. In that case you can use the disable_push property in those pipelines.
You have speed concerns regarding image pulling/pushing. For example your development team is in Europe, but your production servers are in the USA. You would probably choose a caching registry in a European region (so that developers get the best experience), where your main registry is in the USA (close to your production servers)

Therefore in most cases you should make your main registry your caching registry as well. For extra control you can either define a different caching registry or disable selectively automatic pushes with the disable_push property.

Notice that the dynamic image feature of Codefresh (creating docker images on demand in the same pipeline that is using them) will always work regardless of a caching registry.

The default registry

If you define more than one registries you can also click the default button in the UI to define the registry that will be used in both build and push steps if they don’t already contain a registry property.

Notice that successful build steps will always push to the default Codefresh registry unless you also define the disable_push property.