Promotion of Docker Image does not promote if only tag is different

[Stephen.Schaff]

We use the ProGet API to promote docker images from a PreRelease feed to a Release feed. This API takes a version property in the request body that is the Tag of the container image.

Today we ran into an issue where we needed to promote a container image, but it did not promote. Further investigation found that the container image was already in the Release feed, but it did not have the tag that we were trying to promote. We assume that ProGet saw that the container was already in the target feed and so ignored the request.

We tested this using the UI and found that it also ignored our promotion request.

We were able to work around this issue by using the UI to manually add an additional tag to the container image.

However, we use tags in our process to refer to container images. Even though we know that the image is actually uniquely defined by its digest, the tag is very important to us.

I would like to requests that when a Docker Image promotion request arrives to ProGet, if it sees that the container image is already in the target feed, that it looks at the tag that was used in the request, and if the tag is not on the container image in the target feed, it adds the tag to the image.

So it would follow this logic structure:

1. A container image promotion requests arrives to ProGet (via the UI or the API)
2. ProGet checks if the container image already exists in the target feed. If not, normal promotion logic occurs.
3. If yes, then ProGet checks if the tag used to request the container image promotion is on the container in the target feed.
4. If not, then ProGet adds the tag to the container in the target feed.

If this is not acceptable, then I would suggest that the request to do the promotion API respond with a 403 - Already Exists response. That way we can know that the promotion was of something that was already there and know to go add the tag.

[dean-houston]

Hi @Stephen-Schaff,

Thanks for the detailed write-up; the behavior you describe makes sense, and made for very copy/pasting PG-2478 :)

We anticipate getting this in the next maintenance release, scheduled for Sept 15

Best,
Dean