Comment by outcoldman

1 month ago

If somebody missed it, apple/container is a good replacement for Docker for Mac on macOS. I have been using it for the last 6 months, there are issues, but also team is actively developing it.

https://github.com/apple/container

Does that let you build images on a macOS host that works on Windows and Linux too? It doesn't seem to talk about what platform the images support, only where you could run containers.

  • Not sure about Windows, but yes to Linux. It runs linux containers (not darwin), plus can have rosetta. And I build multi arch images (arm64/amd64). It uses buildkit, the same Docker uses, so I am sure you can build Windows containers with it as well.

    Just a note, I am working for the org, that sells enterprise software shipped as container images, publishes on Docker Hub and RedHat. No issues migrating to apple/container.

How is the performance overhead of this compared to docker on MacOS?

  • The only big noticeable issue for me was building a large enterprise images (like Splunk). This issue was fixed [1]. Other than that I have not seen any issues with IO or performance. Running Splunk/OpenSearch/ElasticSearch, some performance tests, enterprise software written in Go (building for arm64/amd64). No issues at all.

    1. https://github.com/apple/container/issues/68