Is `FROM` clause required in Dockerfile?

Question

For all the Dockerfiles I\'ve come across thus (which admittedly is not many), all of them have used a FROM clause to base off an existing image, even if it\'s

Answer 1

Yes, it is. It defines the layers on which the image you are building is based on. If you want to start an image from scratch docker offers an image called scratch

The documentation also says:

A parent image is the image that your image is based on

also

A base image has FROM scratch in its Dockerfile.

Refer to base images documentation