For the Docker Compose setup to work, you need a running container runtime and Docker client and Docker Compose to be installed. The default is to use Docker Desktop, a commercial development tooling suite. Please check their pricing options first. There are free alternatives available for all major operating systems.

Rancher Desktop

Rancher Desktop is a full open source replacement of Docker Desktop supporting all platforms and chipsets. Rancher Desktop is our preferred choice for running containers on developer workstations. At the start of the installation, you can disable the inbuilt Kubernetes in favor of our Kubernetes in Docker setup.

After the installation, you might want to adapt the provisioning configuration of the VM to:

override.yaml. 

provision:
- mode: system
  script: |
    #!/bin/sh
    sysctl -w fs.file-max=200000
    sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288
    sysctl -w fs.inotify.max_user_instances=512

Don’t forget to restart Rancher Desktop to apply the changes.

Docker Desktop

Docker Desktop is a commercial development tooling suite

Colima - Containers in Linux Machines

Colima is a free virtualization tooling for macOS to provide the same seamless developer experience as Docker Desktop. It is based on Lima (Linux Machines), which is using the same QEMU stack as Docker Desktop. Lima ist also the foundation of Rancher Desktop, the Kubernetes developer tooling setup by Rancher.

To install Colima, Docker and Docker Compose run the brew installation formulae for each app:

brew install colima docker docker-compose

To start Colima run:

colima start --cpu 4 --memory 14

After the VM has started, you should be able to use the Docker client. Be aware, that instead of ~/.docker/daemon.json, Colima uses ~/.colima/docker/daemon.json to configure the runtime.

If you are using the Spotify dockerfile-maven-plugin, you also need to set the DOCKER_HOST environment variable. Colima exposes the Docker socket at ~/.colima/docker.sock and Spotifys Docker client only works, when this is set.

DOCKER_HOST=unix:///Users/<YOUR USER NAME>/.colima/docker.sock

Windows Subsystem

Instead of using Docker Desktop, it is also possible to install Docker directly within the Windows Subsystem (WSL2) Linux.