Chainguard Container for ruby

Minimal Ruby base image.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/ruby:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

Chainguard's Ruby image is meant to serve as a drop-in replacement for the official Ruby image from Docker Hub. There are, however, a number of differences between the two images that one should be aware of before migrating to the Chainguard Ruby image:

• The Chainguard Ruby image does not run as the root user and contains only the minimum packages it needs to operate.
• Ruby applications typically require the installation of third-party dependencies through Rubygems. This means that using a fully distroless image for building your application would not work, as these do not include a package manager. In cases like this, you’ll need to implement a multi-stage Docker build that uses one of Chainguard's -dev Image variants to set up the application.
• Bundler, a popular tool for installing Ruby gems, typically installs to /usr/lib/bundle. The default installation location in the Chainguard Ruby image is /home/nonroot, which can cause issues for dependencies that expect to find gems in /usr/lib/bundle.
• Environment variables, especially gem paths, sometimes differ from those in the official Ruby Image.
• The Chainguard Ruby Image does not default to using UTF-8. You will need to specify this yourself.

To better understand the differences between Chainguard's Ruby image and alternatives, it may be helpful to review the upstream's Dockerfiles. For example, you can review the alpine3.21 Dockerfile available for Ruby 3.3.

Getting Started

To better understand how you can work with the Chainguard Ruby Image, we encourage you to check out our guide on getting started with Ruby. This resource demonstrates how you can use Chainguard's Ruby Image in both single- and multi-stage builds.

Documentation and Resources

• Getting Started with the Ruby Chainguard Image
• Vulnerability comparison: ruby

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard Containers are minimal container images that are secure by default.

In many cases, the Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Containers are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a -dev variant.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to leverage the -dev variants, copying application artifacts into a final minimal container that offers a reduced attack surface that won’t allow package installations or logins.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Containers, please visit Chainguard Academy and Chainguard Courses.

In addition to Containers, Chainguard offers VMs and Libraries. Contact Chainguard to access additional products.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.