Image: This is built up from a series of read-only layers of instructions. An image corresponds to the docker container and is used for speedy operation due to the caching mechanism of each step.
Layer: Each layer corresponds to an instruction of the image’s Dockerfile. In simple words, the layer is also an image but it is the image of the instructions run.
Consider the example Dockerfile below.
FROM ubuntu:18.04 COPY . /myapp RUN make /myapp CMD python /myapp/app.py Importantly, each layer is only a set of differences from the layer before it.
- The result of building this docker file is an image. Whereas the instructions present in this file add the layers to the image. The layers can be thought of as intermediate images. In the example above, there are 4 instructions, hence 4 layers are added to the resultant image.
