Elasticsearch DHI image reports *-SNAPSHOT / “pre-release not suitable for production” even on release tags (e.g. 9.2.6)

[ghettosamson]

Summary

We’re evaluating the Docker Hardened Images Elasticsearch runtime image for production use (ECS Fargate). When running the image tagged as a stable release (e.g. 9.2 / 9.2.6), Elasticsearch reports itself as a *-SNAPSHOT build and logs the warning that it is “not suitable for production”.

This is a blocker for production adoption because it triggers compliance/monitoring policies that disallow pre-release software, and it creates confusing operational signals.

What we observed

Using the DHI image, Elasticsearch reports 9.2.6-SNAPSHOT at startup.

INFO  org.elasticsearch.common.util.FeatureFlag - The current build is a snapshot, feature flag [new_ml_memory_computation] is enabled
{"message":"version[9.2.6-SNAPSHOT], ... build[tar/b6e59ddaac5fc0c537d10132b2a1d5511ff8b1b5/...]", ...}
{"log.level":"WARN","message":"version [9.2.6-SNAPSHOT] is a pre-release version of Elasticsearch and is not suitable for production", ...}

Steps to reproduce

Pull and run the release-tagged image:

docker pull dhi.io/elasticsearch:9.2.6
docker run --rm -p 9200:9200 dhi.io/elasticsearch:9.2.6

Observe container logs show 9.2.6-SNAPSHOT and the pre-release warning.
(We see this on Docker Desktop as well; note that Docker Desktop may fail later due to seccomp kernel config on Apple Silicon, but the -SNAPSHOT version/warning appears before that and is reproducible regardless.)

Requested fix

Please adjust the build pipeline for release images so that:

the produced distribution is not marked as a snapshot build (no -SNAPSHOT in version[])
Elasticsearch does not emit the “pre-release not suitable for production” warning for release-tagged images.

[orndorffgrant]

Thanks for pointing this out @ghettosamson! This was an oversight in our build settings. I'm fixing it.

[orndorffgrant]

This should be fixed now @ghettosamson
The following:

docker pull dhi.io/elasticsearch:9.2.6
docker run --rm dhi.io/elasticsearch:9.2.6 elasticsearch --version

should display a non snapshot version:

Version: 9.2.6, Build: tar/b6e59ddaac5fc0c537d10132b2a1d5511ff8b1b5/2026-03-05T09:41:48.607026657Z, JVM: 21.0.10

Let us know if you have any further issues!

[ghettosamson]

Thank you so much for the fix @orndorffgrant!

[ghettosamson]

I confirm that it no longer says SNAPSHOT

docker run --rm dhi.io/elasticsearch:9.2.6 elasticsearch --version
/bin/bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8): No such file or directory
/bin/bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_US.UTF-8): No such file or directory
warning: ignoring JAVA_HOME=/opt/java/openjdk/21; using ES_JAVA_HOME
Version: 9.2.6, Build: tar/b6e59ddaac5fc0c537d10132b2a1d5511ff8b1b5/2026-03-05T09:41:34.311208588Z, JVM: 21.0.10