Pin the base image by digest and drop the inert `yum update -y`

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Refactor
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
docker, dockerfile

Research direction

Read the top of Dockerfile and compare the base-image decision with Dependabot work in #2185. Confirm the dated Amazon Linux image and its digest strategy, remove the inert update line, and ensure the final FROM line preserves a readable tag with a digest.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

infrastructure internal ready-for-human

Two changes to the top of Dockerfile, both one line. They can land separately.

The yum update -y cannot install anything. An Amazon Linux 2023 dated tag pins dnf's $releasever to the snapshot date, which I confirmed by reading it inside both images:

Tag $releasever
2023.12.20260909.0 2023.12.20260909
2023.12.20260914.0 2023.12.20260914

The repo config resolves through mirrorlist=https://cdn.amazonlinux.com/al2023/core/mirrors/$releasever/$basearch/mirror.list, a frozen dated mirror. Running the update inside the older pinned base reports Nothing to do and leaves every package exactly where it was. #2183 added a comment saying so, but a line that can never do anything is better deleted than annotated. dnf upgrade --releasever=latest would genuinely pull packages forward, and I do not want it, because it destroys the reproducibility the pin exists for.

The tag has no digest. A registry tag is a mutable pointer, so the "reproducible builds" claim in the comment above FROM is a convention we trust rather than something the build checks. Adding @sha256:<digest> alongside the readable tag makes the claim true and keeps bumps reviewable.

Decide the digest question together with the Dependabot work in #2185, since Dependabot's docker updater can maintain a tag@digest pair and that changes how much the pin costs us.

[!IMPORTANT]
Internal only — this issue is maintained by the core team and is not accepting external contributions.

Dominant language
TypeScript
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Avg merge
2d 14h
Merged PRs (30d)
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