Facilitating automatic container updating within a container-based environment

A system for facilitating processing within a container-based processing environment, the system comprising:

• a memory;
• and
• a processing circuit communicatively coupled with the memory, wherein the system performs a method comprising:
• providing an application container, the application container having an associated configuration file with automatic update specified in connection with a referenced base image, the automatic update specified including a version update indicator identifying a range of base image updates to be automatically applied during runtime, the application container including an existing version of the base image;
• running the application container with the existing version of the base image;
• identifying, in association with the running the application container, availability of an updated version of the base image within the container-based processing environment which is to be runtime incorporated into the application container based, in part, on the version update indicator in the configuration file;
• based on identifying availability of the updated version of the base image, and based on the automatic update specified in connection with the base image, automatically updating the application container to an updated container, including replacing a container layer of the application container referencing the existing version of the base image with a container layer referencing the updated version of the base image to obtain the updated container, the updated container including the updated version of the base image and the existing version of the base image;
• and
• wherein the automatically updating the application container occurs within a runtime environment of the application container.

A computer program product for facilitating processing within a container-based processing environment, the computer program product comprising:

• a computer readable storage medium readably by a processing circuit and storing instructions for execution by the processing circuit which, when executed, perform a method comprising:
• providing an application container, the application container having an associated configuration file with automatic update specified in connection with a referenced base image, the automatic update specified including a version update indicator identifying a range of base image updates to be automatically applied during runtime, the application container including an existing version of the base image;
• running the application container with the existing version of the base image;
• identifying, in association with the running the application container, availability of an updated version of the base image within the container-based processing environment which is to be runtime incorporated into the application container based, in part, on the version update indicator in the configuration file;
• based on identifying availability of the updated version of the base image, and based on the automatic update specified in connection with the base image, automatically updating the application container to an updated container, including replacing a container layer of the application container referencing the existing version of the base image with a container layer referencing the updated version of the base image to obtain the updated container, the updated container including the updated version of the base image and the existing version of the base image;
• and
• wherein the automatically updating the application container occurs within a runtime environment of the application container.