Pre-Release: New Firebird Docker Images -- Now with Firebird 6 Snapshot

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F. D. Castel

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Apr 7, 2026, 12:19:06 PM (7 days ago) Apr 7

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Hi everyone,

We have been working on a significant overhaul of the official [firebird-docker](https://github.com/FirebirdSQL/firebird-docker) images, and a pre-release version is now available for testing at:

https://github.com/fdcastel/firebird-docker-fork/pkgs/container/firebird

We would love to get feedback from the community before these changes are merged upstream.

What's New

Firebird 6 Snapshot Images

The new images include a `6-snapshot` tag built daily from the `master` branch of [FirebirdSQL/firebird](https://github.com/FirebirdSQL/firebird). This is the first time a Firebird 6 development snapshot has been available as a Docker image.

# Pull the latest Firebird 6 development snapshot
docker pull ghcr.io/fdcastel/firebird:6-snapshot

# Pull the latest Firebird 5 patch snapshot
docker pull ghcr.io/fdcastel/firebird:5-snapshot

Snapshot images are rebuilt daily, so you always get the latest development build.

Expanded Version Coverage

The image matrix now covers:

- Firebird 3.x — 3.0.8 through 3.0.13 (amd64 only; bookworm, bullseye, jammy)
- Firebird 4.x — 4.0.0 through 4.0.6 (amd64; bookworm, bullseye, jammy, noble)
- Firebird 5.x — 5.0.0 through 5.0.3 (amd64 + arm64; bookworm, bullseye, jammy, noble)
- Firebird 6 snapshot — daily build from `master` (amd64 + arm64)
- Firebird 5 snapshot — daily build from `v5.0-release` (amd64 + arm64)

How to Test

Pull the images directly from the pre-release registry:

# Latest stable (Firebird 5.0.3 on bookworm)
docker pull ghcr.io/fdcastel/firebird:latest

# Firebird 6 development snapshot ← most wanted testers here!
docker pull ghcr.io/fdcastel/firebird:6-snapshot

# A specific version + distro
docker pull ghcr.io/fdcastel/firebird:5.0.3-jammy
docker pull ghcr.io/fdcastel/firebird:4.0.6-bookworm

Things especially worth testing:
- Starting a container and connecting with `isql` or your driver of choice
- ARM64 if you have a compatible machine
- The Firebird 6 snapshot: any differences in behavior, connection issues, or startup errors are valuable to know about

⚠️ Important: These Are Pre-Release Images

These images have not yet been merged into the official repository and may contain problems. The Firebird 6 snapshot in particular is built from unreleased, in-development code. Do not use pre-release images in production environments.

Snapshot tags (`6-snapshot`, `5-snapshot`) are rebuilt daily and do not carry stability guarantees of any kind.

Feedback

Please report any issues, test results, or suggestions at the upstream pull request:

https://github.com/FirebirdSQL/firebird-docker/pull/36

All feedback is welcome: whether it's "works great on my ARM64 machine" or a detailed bug report. The goal is to make these images solid before the PR is merged.

Thank you for helping!