Dockerfile - parameterized FROM

Question

I want to include arguments in the FROM section. Is this possible? In the Dockerfile, I have:

ARG VERSION
FROM tomcat:$VERSION

I build as following:

docker build --build-arg VERSION=8.0 .

I get the following error:

Please provide a source image with `from` prior to commit

I am using docker version 1.12.6.

Answer 1

Docker 1.9 has added support for build time arguments.

Reason for the error