Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

FROM ... AS <name> clarification

Open Beginner friendly
#26,212 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Maintainers usually reply within 1 day

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
1/5
Estimated time
Under an hour
Newbie friendliness
88/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
docker
Domain
documentation

Research direction

Start at the Dockerfile reference page linked in the issue and locate the multi-stage build example containing COPY --from=build. Compare the named stages and references, then make the example internally explicit and verify the rendered documentation still explains the intended syntax clearly.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

status/triage
Is this a docs issue?
  • My issue is about the documentation content or website
Type of issue

Clarification

Description

The last line of the following example snippet may confuse some beginners:

FROM ubuntu AS base
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y shared-tooling

FROM base AS dev
RUN apt-get install -y dev-tooling

FROM base AS prod
COPY --from=build /app /app

as there is no named build stage in the snippet. I understand that it can merely be assumed such a stage exists, but since the prod stage is built from the base base image, it takes a second to comprehend there were merely omitted steps.

Location

https://docs.docker.com/reference/dockerfile/

Suggestion

Although a bit more verbose, it would perhaps be clearer to have something along the lines of:

FROM ubuntu AS base
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y shared-tooling
RUN mkdir /app && touch base.txt

FROM base AS dev
RUN apt-get install -y dev-tooling

FROM base AS prod
COPY --from=base /app /app

in which everything is explicit.

Dominant language
Markdown
Stars
4.7k
Forks
8.5k
Avg merge
1d 18h
Merged PRs (30d)
127

Getting set up

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from docker/docs

All issues in docker/docs

Similar issues

More Documentation issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.