imglife

One config file. Three image tiers. Full lifecycle control.

Why imglife?

One YAML as the contract. One binary to manage it all. imglife industrializes your Docker image lifecycle — from public mirrors to applicative images, through org-wide shared bases.

Whatever your role in the delivery chain, imglife works for you:

For platform & DevOps teams

Dockerfile templates become the single contract for every org image. Patch a base once, propagate to every applicative project at their next build. Managing 50+ images drops from hours per week to near-zero.

For security & CISOs

One audited path for external images. Credentials stay in your vault, never in YAML. Proactive EOL alerts via endoflife.date. Build records in the Package Registry, auditable for SOC 2 / ISO 27001.

For engineering leadership

Automatic retention keeps storage costs flat. No custom scripts or dashboards to own. One YAML, one GitLab pipeline — quick time-to-value, no heavy platform to install.

For application developers

A catalog of pre-configured, infrastructure-compliant images, ready to consume — one less Dockerfile to maintain. CI runs faster thanks to internal pulls (no Docker Hub rate limits). Each project is automatically notified at build time when a newer base is available or when the current one reaches end of life.

The full Why imglife argument Deeper dive: the four structural problems, benefits by role, and what imglife is not.

How it works

imglife models your image inventory in three tiers, driven by a single YAML configuration file:

imglife command flow: Docker Hub → imglife sync → mirrors → imglife build → base images → applicative images → imglife register → Package Registry; imglife cleanup removes stale tags; imglife status generates a report

Mirror public images

Sync upstream images to your private registry on a schedule. Never depend on Docker Hub availability in production builds.

Build enriched base images

Generate Dockerfiles from templates, inject security metadata, and build org-standard base images with one command.

Track end-of-life dates

Know exactly which images are approaching EOL before your team ships code on top of an unsupported runtime.

Pre-configured images for developers

A curated catalog of infrastructure-compliant, ready-to-use images. Each applicative project is automatically notified at build time when a newer base is available — or when the current one reaches end of life.

Generate status reports

Produce a Markdown README that shows every image, its EOL date, and whether applicative projects are up-to-date.

Clean up stale tags

Apply retention policies automatically. Keep the last N tags, archive old ones, and purge expired images.

Connect applicative CI

Applicative projects use imglife check to verify their base image is current, and imglife register to record their builds.

Quick install

# Linux / macOS — download the pre-built binary
curl -LO https://gitlab.com/imglife-project/imglife/-/releases/permalink/latest/downloads/imglife-linux-amd64
chmod +x imglife-linux-amd64
mv imglife-linux-amd64 ~/.local/bin/imglife

# Or build from source (requires Go ≥ 1.22)
go install gitlab.com/imglife-project/imglife/cmd/imglife@latest

Explore the docs

Installation Prerequisites, binary download, build from source.

Quick Start Go from zero to a running pipeline in 5 minutes.

Three-Tier Model Understand the mirror → base → applicative architecture.

Configuration Reference Complete YAML reference with annotated examples.