Should Testcontainers modules drop the default image version?

[HofmeisterAn]

The Testcontainers for .NET modules always come with a pre-configured image version. Updating the version is tricky because we don't want to cause breaking changes for developers. On the other hand, we also don't want to include versions that are too outdated or possibly affected by security issues. In our best practices, we already recommend that developers override and pin the image version.

I'd like to discuss whether we should do the same as Java (and probably other language implementations) and remove the default image version. Instead, developers would need to provide the image/version up front when creating a container builder instance or at least call WithImage(string).

See also: #1407

WDYT?

[digital88]

NodeJs TC did the same recently. Seems like this is the way to go. The only downside is that newer images could be incompatible with builder internal implementation, like Kafka #1353 (comment).

[HofmeisterAn]

You're right, it won't be immediately clear to developers which images are compatible OOB.

Java has been using this approach for quite a while, and it doesn't seem to have caused any major issues so far. It could still be worth looking into ways to give developers better guidance, though.

We could stick with the suggested approach: #1407, adopt a similar mechanism to what Node uses, and leverage Dependabot to automatically detect image version updates and breaking changes.

Edit: I think this is actually much better than the current situation, because we're actively being informed of breaking image versions. I will create an issue and collect necessary information/tasks.