Before jumping into the details, it’s worth explaining what the “Base Image” term refers to. Words matter, there is some misunderstanding between the terms “Parent” and “Base” image. As defined by the Docker documentation, a parent of an image is the image used to start the build of the current image, typically the image identified in the FROM directive in the Dockerfile. If the parent image is SCRATCH, then the image is considered a base image.

However, the terms “base image” and “parent image” are often used interchangeably in the container community.