Can You Create an Empty Repository in Azure Container Registry?

I'm pretty sure ACR doesn’t allow you to manually create an empty repo path. The repository essentially comes into being only when you push your first image. There's no step to create a repository like you might find in other tools. If you want the path to show up early, many suggest pushing a dummy image or tag first and then updating it later. It's a bit hacky but it gets the job done!

Nope, you can't create an empty repository path in Azure Container Registry. It doesn't function like a traditional folder system—repositories are only created once you push an image to them. For example, if you try to set up a path like myregistry.azurecr.io/my-app/backend, it won't exist until you actually push an image, such as by running 'docker push myregistry.azurecr.io/my-app/backend:v1'.

A common workaround is to push a placeholder image, like busybox, to create the repo and then delete it if necessary. Alternatively, you can define your repo paths in tools like Terraform or CI/CD pipelines and let the first deployment handle the creation of the repositories. So essentially, ACR repositories act more like logical namespaces based on tags rather than actual directories, and they can't be pre-created empty—first push leads to repo creation.