Annotations

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Annotations provide descriptive metadata for images. Use annotations to record arbitrary information and attach it to your image, which helps consumers and tools understand the origin, contents, and how to use the image.

Annotations are similar to, and in some sense overlap with, labels. Both serve the same purpose: attach metadata to a resource. As a general principle, you can think of the difference between annotations and labels as follows:

  • Annotations describe OCI image components, such as manifests, indexes, and descriptors.
  • Labels describe Docker resources, such as images, containers, networks, and volumes.

The OCI image specification defines the format of annotations, as well as a set of pre-defined annotation keys. Adhering to the specified standards ensures that metadata about images can be surfaced automatically and consistently, by tools like Docker Scout.

Annotations are not to be confused with attestations:

  • Attestations contain information about how an image was built and what it contains. An attestation is attached as a separate manifest on the image index. Attestations are not standardized by the Open Container Initiative.
  • Annotations contain arbitrary metadata about an image. Annotations attach to the image config as labels, or on the image index or manifest as properties.

Add annotations

You can add annotations to an image at build-time, or when creating the image manifest or index.

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The Docker Engine image store doesn't support loading images with annotations. To build with annotations, make sure to push the image directly to a registry, using the --push CLI flag or the registry exporter.

To specify annotations on the command line, use the --annotation flag for the docker build command:

$ docker build --push --annotation "foo=bar" .

If you're using Bake, you can use the annotations attribute to specify annotations for a given target:

target "default" {
  output = ["type=registry"]
  annotations = ["foo=bar"]
}

For examples on how to add annotations to images built with GitHub Actions, see Add image annotations with GitHub Actions

You can also add annotations to an image created using docker buildx imagetools create. This command only supports adding annotations to an index or manifest descriptors, see CLI reference.

Inspect annotations

To view annotations on an image index, use the docker buildx imagetools inspect command. This shows you any annotations for the index and descriptors (references to manifests) that the index contains. The following example shows an org.opencontainers.image.documentation annotation on a descriptor, and an org.opencontainers.image.authors annotation on the index.

$ docker buildx imagetools inspect <IMAGE> --raw
{
  "schemaVersion": 2,
  "mediaType": "application/vnd.oci.image.index.v1+json",
  "manifests": [
    {
      "mediaType": "application/vnd.oci.image.manifest.v1+json",
      "digest": "sha256:d20246ef744b1d05a1dd69d0b3fa907db007c07f79fe3e68c17223439be9fefb",
      "size": 911,
      "annotations": {
        "org.opencontainers.image.documentation": "https://foo.example/docs",
      },
      "platform": {
        "architecture": "amd64",
        "os": "linux"
      }
    },
  ],
  "annotations": {
    "org.opencontainers.image.authors": "dvdksn"
  }
}

To inspect annotations on a manifest, use the docker buildx imagetools inspect command and specify <IMAGE>@<DIGEST>, where <DIGEST> is the digest of the manifest:

$ docker buildx imagetools inspect <IMAGE>@sha256:d20246ef744b1d05a1dd69d0b3fa907db007c07f79fe3e68c17223439be9fefb --raw
{
  "schemaVersion": 2,
  "mediaType": "application/vnd.oci.image.manifest.v1+json",
  "config": {
    "mediaType": "application/vnd.oci.image.config.v1+json",
    "digest": "sha256:4368b6959a78b412efa083c5506c4887e251f1484ccc9f0af5c406d8f76ece1d",
    "size": 850
  },
  "layers": [
    {
      "mediaType": "application/vnd.oci.image.layer.v1.tar+gzip",
      "digest": "sha256:2c03dbb20264f09924f9eab176da44e5421e74a78b09531d3c63448a7baa7c59",
      "size": 3333033
    },
    {
      "mediaType": "application/vnd.oci.image.layer.v1.tar+gzip",
      "digest": "sha256:4923ad480d60a548e9b334ca492fa547a3ce8879676685b6718b085de5aaf142",
      "size": 61887305
    }
  ],
  "annotations": {
    "index,manifest:org.opencontainers.image.vendor": "foocorp",
    "org.opencontainers.image.source": "https://git.example/foo.git",
  }
}

Specify annotation level

By default, annotations are added to the image manifest. You can specify which level (OCI image component) to attach the annotation to by prefixing the annotation string with a special type declaration:

$ docker build --annotation "<TYPE>:<KEY>=<VALUE>" .

The following types are supported:

  • manifest: annotates manifests.
  • index: annotates the root index.
  • manifest-descriptor: annotates manifest descriptors in the index.
  • index-descriptor: annotates the index descriptor in the image layout.

For example, to build an image with the annotation foo=bar attached to the image index:

$ docker build --tag <IMAGE> --push --annotation "index:foo=bar" .

Note that the build must produce the component that you specify, or else the build will fail. For example, the following does not work, because the docker exporter does not produce an index:

$ docker build --output type=docker --annotation "index:foo=bar" .

Likewise, the following example also does not work, because buildx creates a docker output by default under some circumstances, such as when provenance attestations are explicitly disabled:

$ docker build --provenance=false --annotation "index:foo=bar" .

It is possible to specify types, separated by a comma, to add the annotation to more than one level. The following example creates an image with the annotation foo=bar on both the image index and the image manifest:

$ docker build --tag <IMAGE> --push --annotation "index,manifest:foo=bar" .

You can also specify a platform qualifier within square brackets in the type prefix, to annotate only components matching specific OS and architectures. The following example adds the foo=bar annotation only to the linux/amd64 manifest:

$ docker build --tag <IMAGE> --push --annotation "manifest[linux/amd64]:foo=bar" .

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Reference information: