dracoblue.net

Currently, I am running Rancher Desktop for Docker CLI needs locally. But I've found a viable solution I wanted to give a try.

It's called container and it is released by Apple at https://github.com/apple/container for Apple Silicon Mac devices.

As prerequisites for my setup, I use https://brew.sh/ as my package manager on macOS.

I got the latest release via:

brew install container

Then launch the background services like this:

$ brew services start container

Now you will be able to run:

$ container run hello-world

Hello from Docker!
This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.

Success.

The nice part is, you can install a DNS setup (e.g., for the .test TLD) like this:

$ sudo container system dns create test
$ container system property set dns.domain test

This will make all your containers available like this.

Running Nginx is as easy as:

$ container run --rm --name nginx nginx:alpine

and you can access it via http://nginx.test. Wow! :)

If you need Docker compatibility (and if you are very brave!), give https://github.com/socktainer/socktainer a try.

Install it via:

$ brew tap socktainer/tap
$ brew install socktainer

You will need the Docker CLI and Docker Compose like this:

$ brew install docker
$ brew install docker-compose

(It does not ship with the Docker engine!)

Now you can run Socktainer like this:

$ socktainer
[FolderWatcher] Started watching /Users/jan/Library/Application Support/com.apple.container
[ NOTICE ] Server started on http+unix: /Users/jan/.socktainer/container.sock

or install it via:

$ brew services restart socktainer/tap/socktainer

as a service. Make sure that socktainer is the same version as your apple container. 0.10 of container will NOT work out of the box with socktainer 0.9. I failed this way for you.

$ container --version
container CLI version 0.9.0 (build: release, commit: 3e49dce)
$ socktainer --version
socktainer: v0.9.0 (git commit: 6a710bf)

In another shell (or in your .bashrc), do:

$ export DOCKER_HOST=unix://$HOME/.socktainer/container.sock

and you can run:

$ docker run --rm -it hello-world

Hello from Docker!
This message shows that your installation appears to be working correctly.

Have fun!