What happens during rebase?

Rebase allows app developers or operators to rapidly update an app image when its runtime base image has changed.

Rebasing explained

By using image layer rebasing, this command avoids the need to fully rebuild the app.

At its core, image rebasing is a simple process. By inspecting an app image, rebase can determine whether or not a newer version of the app’s base image exists (either locally or in a registry). If so, rebase updates the app image’s layer metadata to reference the newer base image version.

Example: Rebasing an app image

Consider an app image my-app:my-tag that was originally built using the default builder. That builder has a reference to a run image called pack/run. Running the following will update the base of my-app:my-tag with the latest version of pack/run.

$ pack rebase my-app:my-tag

TIP: pack rebase has a --publish flag that can be used to publish the updated app image directly to a registry. Using --publish is optimal when using a registry in comparison to the docker daemon.