Version tags for the Docker containers

[abbydrury]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

If a researcher updates the container definitions, it's not easy to determine if the rest of the team is running the same version of the containers.

Describe the solution you'd like

I want to be able to know what version of the environment someone is running automatically in order to remove some potential for human error.

Additional context

Documentation of steps to do or things to consider before rebuilding containers would be helpful.

[abbydrury]

@BeniamG In your mental model, would updating a version tag be done manually or automatically?

Automatically generated tags could be difficult – using the date built will vary across researchers, using the latest commit hash could also vary across researchers even if the configuration of the environment is the same, using the latest tagged version in GitHub will be inconsistent if you've changed the environment but haven't completed the commit/push....

Manually generated version tags might help, but it puts the responsibility for remembering to update the version tag onto the researcher – given how infrequently this is likely to happen once research starts, I worry that it won't be remembered and the version tags will become incorrect and misleading.

With all of that in mind, what would constitute a meaningful version tag / what do you consider a "version"? Maybe understanding that will help me brainstorm better solutions...