Dockerfile s have been able to use ARG s to allow passing in parameters during a docker build using the CLI argument --build-arg for some time. But until recently (Docker's 17.05 release, to be precise), you weren't able to use an ARG to specify all or part of your Dockerfile 's mandatory FROM command.

But since the pull request Allow ARG in FROM was merged, you can now specify an image / repository to use at runtime. This is great for flexibility, and as a concrete example, I used this feature to allow me to pull from a private Docker registry when building a Dockerfile in production, or to build from a local Docker image that was created as part of a CI/testing process inside Travis CI.

To use an ARG in your Dockerfile 's FROM :

ARG MYAPP_IMAGE=myorg/myapp:latest
FROM $MYAPP_IMAGE
...

Then if you want to use a different image/tag, you can provide it at runtime:

docker build -t container_tag --build-arg MYAPP_IMAGE=localimage:latest .

If you don't specify --build-arg , then Docker will use the default value in the ARG .

Typically, it's preferred that you set the FROM value in the Dockerfile itself—but there are many situations (e.g. CI testing) where you can justify making it a runtime argument.