How to name Dockerfiles

Question

I'm unsure of how to name Dockerfiles. Many on GitHub use Dockerfile without a file extension. Do I give them a name and extension; if so what? Or do I just call them Dockerfile?

Answer 1

I have created two Dockerfiles in same directory,

# vi one.Dockerfile
# vi two.Dockerfile

to build both Dockerfiles use,

# docker build . -f one.Dockerfile
# docker build . -f two.Dockerfile

Note: you should be in present working directory..

Answer 2

It seems this is true but, personally, it seems to me to be poor design. Sure, have a default name (with extension) but allow other names and have a way of specifying the name of the docker file for commands.

Having an extension is also nice because it allows one to associate applications to that extension type. When I click on a Dockerfile in MacOSX it treats it as a Unix executable and tries to run it.

If Docker files had an extension I could tell the OS to start them with a particular application, e.g. my text editor application. I'm not sure but the current behaviour may also be related to the file permisssions.