Spring Boot Container Images

Own how the service becomes a container image: base runtime, jar layering, stage boundaries, JVM ergonomics inside the cgroup limit, process identity, and layer order. An image is the unit of immutability in every later stage, so a sloppy build here is paid for by every pipeline, cache, and rollback decision that follows.

When to use

• Writing or refactoring a Dockerfile for a Boot service.
• Deciding between a fat-jar copy, layer extraction, jlink, buildpacks, or a native image.
• A container is OOMKilled, restarts, or never receives SIGTERM cleanly.
• Heap sizing disagrees with the memory limit the orchestrator sets.
• Image is larger than it should be, or every code change invalidates the dependency layer.
• Aligning the local image, the CI image, and the deployed digest.
• Deciding what belongs in the build context.

When not to use