Installing/using Docker on MacOS without Docker.app

README.md

Setup Docker for macOS without Docker.app (the default GUI)

Since the Docker app for macOS is not free to use anymore for companies, I looked into running "bare" docker-machine. This runs the "Docker engine" (?) in a Linux VirtualBox VM, managed by docker-machine.

Prerequisites

1. VirtualBox
2. Homebrew
   1. If installed, update your packages with brew update & brew upgrade
   2. Or install via Homebrew
3. No Docker.app (remove Docker.app from ~/Applications)
4. No ~/.docker folder

Installation

1. brew install docker docker-machine docker-compose
2. docker-machine create —driver=virtualbox default
   1. If that fails, open macOS system /Security & Privacy/
   2. Unlock if neccessary
   3. Press allow /Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager/ system extension
   4. Reboot
   5. Remove VM named default from Vm VirtualBox Mamager
   6. Remove ~/.docker folder
   7. Repeat step 2
3. Profit?

Sources

1. Docker Machine Overview | Docker Documentation
2. Docker can’t connect to docker daemon - Stack Overflow

Problems

• Applications can't access docker network out-of-the-box so a custom setup is required.
• Port forwarding is not straight forward.
• Application configs (database.yml and redis URLs) may require changes to support both Docker.app and VirtualBox setup
• Incompatible with M1 machines
  • Or more precisely, requires Docker Daemon API 1.40 or lower which does not support the platform: linux/x86_64 key/value in docker-compose