The pyaction Docker container has reached 8 million pulls from the GitHub Container Registry, coinciding with the release of Python 3.14. I have been maintaining, pyaction, which is a Docker container with Python, git, and the GitHub CLI. It has now surpassed 8 million pulls from the GitHub Container Registry.
The pyaction container was originally developed to support developing GitHub Actions in Python. There are several GitHub container actions that use pyaction as the base image, and specifically pull it from the GitHub Container Registry. So this likely represents over 8 million runs of those dependent Actions. It is also available from Docker Hub.
The pyaction container is a Python slim image on top of which I've added curl, git, gpg, and the GitHub CLI. The current versions of these within the latest release of pyaction are:
- Python 3.14.0
- GitHub CLI 2.81.0
- git 2.47.3
- curl 8.14.1
- gpg 2.4.7
The maintainer is not affiliated with GitHub.
Table of Contents:
Tagging Convention
Docker tags include the Python version and optionally the GitHub CLI version. We publish images for older Python versions whenever GitHub releases a new version of the GitHub CLI. At the present time, pyaction supports Python 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13, and 3.14. Images are tagged as follows:
- For the current version of Python (e.g.,
3.14.0
) and current version of GitHub CLI (e.g.,2.81.0
), all of the following tags are available and equivalent:latest
,3.14.0
,3.14
,3.14.0-gh-2.81.0
,3.14.0-gh-2.81
,3.14.0-gh-2
,3.14-gh-2.81.0
,3.14-gh-2.81
,3.14-gh-2
. - For prior versions of Python (
3.10
,3.11
,3.12
,3.13
) and current version of GitHub CLI (2.81.0
), all of the following tags are available and equivalent:3.13
,3.13-gh-2.81.0
,3.13-gh-2.81
,3.13-gh-2
.
This tag scheme began with version 2.75.0
of the GitHub CLI. We don't support pyaction images with earlier versions of the GitHub CLI (other than via older images published with the prior tagging scheme).
This tag scheme began with Python 3.13.5
. Python patch level tags are not available for pyaction prior to Python 3.13.5
.
Installing
The pre-built image is hosted on both Docker Hub and the GitHub Container Registry. You can use it in the following ways.
Docker Pull Command
Pull the latest image from Docker Hub with the following (or replace the latest
tag with the desired version):
docker pull cicirello/pyaction:latest
Pull from the Github Container Registry with:
docker pull ghcr.io/cicirello/pyaction:latest
Use as a base image in a Dockerfile
Use as a base image in a Dockerfile (or replace the latest
tag with the desired version):
FROM cicirello/pyaction:latest
# The rest of your Dockerfile would go here.
Or you can use as a base image (via the Github Container Registry) with:
FROM ghcr.io/cicirello/pyaction:latest
# The rest of your Dockerfile would go here.
More Information
Please consider starring pyaction's GitHub repository, and even better using it to develop Actions, or just to use the GitHub CLI:
pyaction
Website for our GitHub Actions and tools for developing them: https://actions.cicirello.org/
Summary
This Docker image is designed to support implementing Github Actions with Python. It starts with the official python docker image as the base, which is a Debian OS. It specifically uses python:3-slim to keep the image size down for faster loading of Github Actions that use pyaction. On top of the base, we've installed curl gpg, git, and the GitHub CLI. We added curl and gpg because they are needed to install the GitHub CLI, and they may come in handy anyway (especially curl) when implementing a GitHub Action.
Blog Posts: See a list of blog posts about pyaction later in this README.
Multiplatform Image
pyaction supports the following platforms:
- linux/386
- linux/amd64
- linux/arm64
- linux/arm/v7
- linux/arm/v6
Source Repository and Builds
The source repository is maintained…
For more information about pyaction, see my earlier post here on DEV, as well as an information page about pyaction on the web.

pyaction: A Docker container with Python, git, and the GitHub CLI
Vincent A. Cicirello ・ Dec 28 '22
Where You Can Find Me
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