What is the difference between CMD and ENTRYPOINT in a Dockerfile?

Question

In Dockerfiles there are two commands that look similar to me: CMD and ENTRYPOINT. But I guess that there is a (subtle?) difference between them -

Answer 1

I'll add my answer as an example¹ that might help you better understand the difference.

Let's suppose we want to create an image that will always run a sleep command when it starts. We'll create our own image and specify a new command:

FROM ubuntu
CMD sleep 10

Building the image:

docker build -t custom_sleep .
docker run custom_sleep
# sleeps for 10 seconds and exits

What if we want to change the number of seconds? We would have to change the Dockerfile since the value is hardcoded there, or override the command by providing a different one:

docker run custom_sleep sleep 20

While this works, it's not a good solution, as we have a redundant "sleep" command. Why redundant? Because the container's only purpose is to sleep, so having to specify the sleep command explicitly is a bit awkward.

Now let's try using the ENTRYPOINT instruction:

FROM ubuntu
ENTRYPOINT sleep

This instruction specifies the program that will be run when the container starts.

Now we can run:

docker run custom_sleep 20

What about a default value? Well, you guessed it right:

FROM ubuntu
ENTRYPOINT ["sleep"]
CMD ["10"]

The ENTRYPOINT is the program that will be run, and the value passed to the container will be appended to it.

The ENTRYPOINT can be overridden by specifying an --entrypoint flag, followed by the new entry point you want to use.

^{Not mine, I once watched a tutorial that provided this example}