How to Build and push Docker images with GitHub Action?

name: Build and push Docker images
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - 'main'
jobs:
  docker:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      -
        name: Set up QEMU
        uses: docker/setup-qemu-action@v3
      -
        name: Set up Docker Buildx
        uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3
      -
        name: Login to Docker Hub
        uses: docker/login-action@v3
        with:
          username: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_USERNAME }}
          password: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_TOKEN }}
      -
        name: Build and push
        uses: docker/build-push-action@v5
        with:
          push: true
          tags: user/app:latest

build-push-action

GitHub Action to build and push Docker images with Buildx

What is Build and push Docker images GitHub Action?​

Build and push Docker images is a GitHub Action that automates building and pushing Docker images using Buildx, which leverages the robust features of Moby BuildKit. This includes capabilities like multi-platform builds, handling secrets, using remote caches, and more.

Basically, this Action helps streamline the creation of Docker images that are compatible with multiple platforms, which is great for ensuring our applications can run on different hardware setups without any extra manual setup. You don't even need to manually check out the repo if you use the default Git context—it's all handled automatically, which is pretty neat!

How to Build and push Docker images with GitHub Action?​

Setup: It integrates with other actions like setup-buildx for initializing builders, setup-qemu for adding emulation support (handy for cross-platform builds), and login for Docker registry authentication.

Build and Push: You can directly build and push images to Docker Hub or any registry of your choice. It supports tagging, handling secrets during builds, and even managing build caches to speed up subsequent builds.

For example, you can specify a subdirectory as the build context or use different repositories by authenticating with a GitHub Token. This makes it super adaptable to various CI/CD pipelines we might consider.

The potential here is to significantly reduce our overhead on managing Docker image builds across different platforms, which can save us a lot of time and prevent configuration errors. Plus, the added security measures with secrets and token support ensure that our builds are secure from start to finish.