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Install Docker on Mac OS X

Docker is a development platform used to build, run, compile, and share applications in a containerized environment. Containerization is the process of packaging all the application dependencies and configurations together so that the same container can be run in various environments.

As a developer, we need to work on many virtual machines. I used mainly VMware and Virtual box when I was using windows. When you work on virtual machines in Mac OS X, you can use Docker to work with virtual machines. If we want to use docker on Mac, Docker desktop is the best tool to use.

Download Docker on Mac OS X

Go to the docker hub page to get the community edition of the Docker.

Click the Get Docker link from the browser or use the command to download the files from Url in the downloads folder.

 ~ % cd Downloads 
 % curl -o Docker.dmg https://download.docker.com/mac/stable/Docker.dmg
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
 32  674M   32  220M    0     0  12.1M      0  0:00:55  0:00:18  0:00:37 11.5M

Once the file is downloaded you can install Docker by double-clicking the Docker.dmg file.

Once this installation is complete, you will see an icon of Docker in Launchpad and installed location through terminal. Click on the icon from the launchpad when you want to use it.

Once you start the docker it’s menu will come up in the main title window. you can sign in using the docker user name and password or sign up for a new one if you don’t have it. You need to sign in to use many of the images the docker provides.

Let’s use the terminal to check the status of installation.

Test the Docker Installation

Run the docker --version command to check the docker version

~ % docker --version
Docker version 19.03.8, build afacb8b

Pull the hello-world image from Docker Hub and run a container:

~ % docker run hello-world
Unable to find image 'hello-world:latest' locally
latest: Pulling from library/hello-world
1b930d010525: Pull complete 
Digest: sha256:f9dfddf63636d84ef479d645ab5885156ae030f611a56f3a7ac7f2fdd86d7e4e
Status: Downloaded newer image for hello-world:latest

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

List the Images

Lets List the hello-world image that was downloaded from docker using docker image ls command.

 ~ % docker image ls
REPOSITORY          TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
hello-world         latest              fce289e99eb9        15 months ago       1.84kB

Exploring Docker helo

 ~ % docker --help

Usage:	docker [OPTIONS] COMMAND

A self-sufficient runtime for containers

Options:
      --config string      Location of client config files
                           (default "/Users/nitendragautam/.docker")
  -c, --context string     Name of the context to use to connect
                           to the daemon (overrides DOCKER_HOST
                           env var and default

List the Containers

If you want to list the installed containers, use the docker container ls --all command

 ~ % docker container --help
 ~ % docker run --help
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