Hey there!

tl;dr The Docker client for Windows is here and now it’s the real deal. Thanks MSFT! :)

If you’re one of the poor souls that have to suffer with the Windows terminal (willingly or not) on a daily basis but always dream about Bash, then you’re probably a fan of MSYS just like me.

If you’re a developer too, then you’re probably a fan of msysGit.. just like me :)

Finally, if you follow the IT world trends then you must have heard of Docker already.. unless you’re living in some sort of cave (without Internet access). If you enjoy playing with the bleeding edge… just like me, then chances are that you’ve already given it a try.

If you’ve done so before this month and survived the experience, then kudos because the least I can say is that the Windows “integration” wasn’t all that great.

Since Docker leverages Linux kernel features so heavily, it should not come as a surprise that support on Windows requires a virtual machine to host the Docker engine. The only natural choice for that VM was of course Oracle’s Virtualbox given that Hyper-V is only available in Windows Server or Windows 8+ Pro/Enterprise.

Boot2Docker was nice, especially the VM, but the Boot2Docker client made me feel in jail (no pun intended). Who wants to start a specific shell just to be able to play with Docker? I understand where that came from, but my first reflex was to try and integrate Docker in my usual msysGit bash shell.

To do so, I had to jump through a few hoops and even though I did succeed, a hugely annoying limitation remained: I wasn’t able to easily run the docker command using files elsewhere than under /Users/…

At the time, the docker client was actually never executed on Windows, it was executed within the VM, through SSH (which is what the Boot2Docker client did). Because of that, docker could only interact with files reachable from the VM (i.e., made available via mount). All the mounting/sharing/SSH (and keys!) required quite a few workarounds.

At the end of the day it was still fun to workaround the quirks because I had to play with Virtualbox’s CLI (e.g., to configure port redirections), learn a bit more about Docker’s API, …

Well, fast forward April 16th and there it comes, Microsoft has helped port the docker client to Windows.

With this release and combined with Docker machine which is also available for Windows, there will be a lot less suffering involved in used Docker on Windows :)

In the next post I’ll go through some of the functions/aliases I’ve added to my bash profile to make my life easier.