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Docker Machine is now in maintenance mode
As has been obvious for some time now, we've slowly stopped implementing or accepting new features for the project. Its desktop usage has mostly been supplanted by our Docker Desktop product. Provisioning on a variety of Cloud providers is overall better achieved using infrakit. Overall, pursuing active development on the project doesn't make sense anymore at this point, which is why we're officially closing the faucet for non-bugfix changes, starting today.
I'm sure many will want to chime in on this, please keep the discussion civil and keep it inside this thread so we can keep things manageable.
Oh :(
Well this was nice while it lasted :) Thx everyone for the good work !
If official support for machine is closing, what is the likelihood for continued community-driven support in this repo?
for those of you needing machine, there is some activity in the https://github.com/machine-drivers organisation, and it may make sense for you to work on, and release from https://github.com/machine-drivers/machine...
We have already looked into adding patches to this organisation, as they seem to be held from being merged here: #4509 (This is blocking for localized versions of Windows). Best is to move ahead with some form of releases, however for us: minikube and minishift we only need to link against a library.
@shin- As a thought, the new user "Getting Started" docs still use docker-machine as a central part of the intro.
For people interested in updating the docs, which should they walk people through instead?
- Windows: Seems like Docker Desktop for Windows
- Mac: Seems like Docker Desktop for macOS
- Linux: Keep using the Machine docs?
I think that this really is a shame. The real power of machine was somewhere between the simplicity of getting things work on one machine using Desktop and the complexity behind infrakit. machine was perfect to fire up a few machines for testing distributed workloads at smaller scale.
Hi!
Does somebody have an alternative software for Linux? I don't want to run docker as root on my host machine and docker-machine was giving some isolation in this respect. Is there any plan for Docker for Linux?
Thanks!
@shin- Thanks for your suggestion. I'm starting a new project, so using docker-machine for it would be a weird move, wouldn't it?
@shin- Weelll... being closed to PR's kind of means using it for new projects is probably a bad idea. :wink:
@justinclift I don't want to get into too much detail because we've got more info coming in a prepared statement, but as I tried to state in the original post, the project is not closed to PRs; we're simply looking to limit those to bugfixes as opposed to new features. If the featureset of the current iteration of docker-machine fits your needs, there is no reason to abandon it, even for new projects.
It looks like infrakit is not active either. There were no releases for more than a year, no update on DockerCon 2018, no user documentation similar to https://docs.docker.com/machine/
Docker machine documentation suggests to try Docker Cloud which in turn is shutting down in favor of Docker EE (which is not generally available)
It all encourages to either fork the project or look elsewhere: https://landscape.cncf.io/grouping=landscape&landscape=infrastructure-automation&sort=first-commit
Not complaining, just describing my perspective.
Interesting. Looking at the commit history for InfraKit, although it does receive new commits every few days, it mostly appears to be a one-man effort.
Activity seems to have dried up around April/May. Guessing people's time was redirected to other stuff.
Is that an incorrect way of looking at things?
@shin- but many of the PRs (like bugfixes I provide to make internationalization on Hyper-V working) have not been taken for merge. This is not a good indication of "we're simply looking to limit those to bugfixes as opposed to new features" in light of "there is no reason to abandon it, even for new projects".
@shin-
I don't want to get into too much detail because we've got more info coming in a prepared statement
Could you link to that official statement (whenever it is published?) I can't find it.
I strongly recommend changing the docs so that they are up to date. My last hour was a senseless exploration of boot2docker, which clearly points to docker machine, which has a warning on its main page advising to use docker cloud as an up to date technology. This points to the Docker cloud doc description (not the migration page!!!!), which required me some googling to find out it was discontinued in May (but announced in March, so 7 months ago). Now came here to suggest removing the warning from the docker machine doc, I find out in this 3 months old issue docker machine is also being discontinued. This is just not how documentation should work. I'll revert back to some ad hoc solution, but I'd abandon docker if I wasn't already using it.
@aliceminotto It would help us all update outdated doc's if you could point to the sites or pages you're talking about.
docker-machine isn't going away, it's just not increasing the scope of features.
Docker Cloud isn't going away, it's just no longer used for server provisioning/management. It's still there for image building. Docker has other tooling for production servers like Docker for AWS, Docker for Azure, and DCI for Docker Enterprise.
I had forgotten entirely about the old http://boot2docker.io website and didn't realize the notice there was worded so poorly (apologies for any confusion that contributed to!) -- I've now updated (and slimmed down) that content to hopefully clarify better that boot2docker the ancient CLI tool is what was deprecated in favor of Docker Machine and that boot2docker the distribution is not deprecated but is rather in maintenance mode (same as Docker Machine).
To put that another way: new Docker releases, kernel updates, etc, but concerted attempts to keep new features/functionality to an absolute minimum to ensure continued maintainability for the few folks who can't yet transition to the better-suited Docker for Windows / Docker for Mac products or the production server tooling / solutions referenced above (Windows 7 users who can't Docker for Windows at all, Windows 10 Home users who thus can't Hyper-V, VirtualBox users who thus can't Hyper-V, etc etc).
@tianon : you might also want to mention Linux users who don't want to transition to Mac or Windows...
@Vanuan : either because your distro was too old (e.g. RHEL6), or because you weren't allowed root...
Either way, transitioning to Docker Desktop is not an option - it's either Docker Engine or DIY LinuxKit ?
I would like to thank the makers of docker-machine and boot2docker, for making docker more acessible.
And with the effort of machine-drivers (for KVM), hopefully it will continue working for a while longer still
Why would I use server distro for desktop? And why I'm not administrator of my desktop? But somehow I'm allowed to access KVM?
It looks like you're looking for solution to run docker on KVM server? If that's the case, I'm currently exploring infrakit here: https://github.com/docker/infrakit/issues/913
But if you're only looking to run docker on Linux desktop I don't get why wouldn't you install latest Ubuntu along with Docker CE. If you want to run it in VM then do so. You can mount your home directory in VirtualBox and use docker over SSH. What's the problem here? There's no Docker for Linux Desktop because it doesn't make sense. At least to me.
Why would I use server distro for desktop? And why I'm not administrator of my desktop? But somehow I'm allowed to access KVM?
Some people have to use whatever desktop OS their employer hands them. RHEL6 is an example that I've (a few months ago) been told about by a guy working in a stock trading place. :wink:
As a general data point, with Libvirt it (at least used to) have a concept of VM's that users could run in their account, that would be just for them. eg not accessible to other people logged into the same machine
Not sure if that was ever developed in any depth, as most of the Libvirt development effort went towards "system level" VM things instead of user level.
if you're only looking to run docker on Linux desktop I don't get why wouldn't you install latest Ubuntu
Quite a few people dislike Ubuntu for one reason or another. :wink:
Starting with v18.09 (DOCKER_HOST=ssh://), setting up remote Docker machines without docker-machine is really trivial: https://medium.com/lucjuggery/docker-tips-access-the-docker-daemon-via-ssh-97cd6b44a53
As a general data point, with Libvirt it (at least used to) have a concept of VM's that users could run in their account, that would be just for them. eg not accessible to other people logged into the same machine
Yes, its called qemu://session Latest GNOME even has a nice app for that - Boxes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_Boxes
User mode KVM virtualization has some drawbacks wrt networking. So I think Virtualbox is the only choice in those conditions.
And to have CLI for VirtualBox the choice is vagrant. You only need some Linux distribution to run docker on top of it. And the most battle tested is Ubuntu/Debian. You can download any other distro though. But you have to package it yourself to use with Vagrant: https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/virtualbox/boxes.html
Just saying that docker-machine was a good solution for those Linux users, just as it was for users of old Mac and old Windows... All that it needed was to run docker on a non-standard port, instead of hardcoded 2376 ? And a new qemu driver that didn't require libvirt group (i.e. root). Maybe infrakit/hyperkit will be an alternative in the future, but at the moment (the link above) it looks quite rough around the edges still.
@Vanuan : I know about the ubuntu/vagrant options, I just referred to it simply as "Docker Engine" above.
@justinclift : each user gets their own ssh keys/docker certs, so the machines are reasonably separated.
@afbjorklund No worries. It's been years since I worked at Red Hat on the Libvirt team. These days I generally just use it when diagnosing issues, rather than still being super in-depth with it. :smile:
@afbjorklund Let's clear this up.
you might also want to mention Linux users who don't want to transition to Mac or Windows... Either way, transitioning to Docker Desktop is not an option - it's either Docker Engine or DIY LinuxKit ? I know about the ubuntu/vagrant options, I just referred to it simply as "Docker Engine" above.
boot2docker is both distribution (boot2docker.iso) and the tool to manage virtualbox (boot2docker-cli). boot2docker.iso includes Docker CE (former Docker Engine):
https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/blob/d465167d83310295b5847ba315905f52c3ca1435/Dockerfile#L426-L435
And this will keep updated to new Docker CE releases.
The boot2docker-cli is gone, but in essence it's just vagrant with virtualbox. Vagrant is still around.
Docker-machine with KVM driver uses boot2docker.iso to provision Docker CE to new libvirt VMs.
Docker Desktop uses distributions built with linuxkit to provision Docker CE to Hyper-V and xhyve.
To picture it all:
So as you can see, all the solutions include Docker Engine (currently called Docker CE for Linux) in one way on another.
There are just too many environments and virtualization/cloud solutions. Consequently there's no one tool that can work equally well on windows/mac/linux and support QEMU/Virtualbox/xhyve/Hyper-v along with different clouds and over-SSH provisioning. And such tool also needs configurability: support different ports, memory/cpu resource management, networking, etc. So probably a general purpose tool along with some configuration file downloaded over http would be the best solution.
@Vanuan : yes, this what we said above. In order to replace docker-machine, you need to switch to Mac or Windows and Docker Desktop - at least until someone creates something similar with LinuxKit and libvirt...
We don't need to talk about boot2docker-cli anymore, and the support for Linux drivers has already moved to the "machine-drivers" organization - as only VirtualBox is available with the standard docker-machine.