The status of docker

[Stefan Bethke]

Am 19.01.2019 um 15:24 schrieb Grzegorz Junka <list1 at gjunka.com>:
> 
> Hello, does anyone know the current status of docker on FreeBSD? Wiki https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker states it's experimental. The last commit in https://github.com/kvasdopil/docker/tree/freebsd-compat is also from 2015.
> 
> There in fact are two ports, freebsd-docker (from 2015) and docker (18.06). What's the difference between them and which one should I use to run docker images on FreeBSD host?

I believe at this point in time, all you can do is have a Linux machine somewhere (for example, in a local Bhyve VM), and use the Docker command line client from FreeBSD to manage it. That’s what sysutils/docker is for.

> Has this project been completed and now only needs testing, or has it been abandoned, or maybe the approach has changed and I am looking in a wrong place?

It looks abandoned, unfortunately.  And looking at the entire container infrastructure, reviving it would require a significant effort. For example, it most real-life usage scenarios, you want to be able to manipulate IPFW/PF entries to forward ports from a host interface into a container, which would require special plugins for Docker, or a compatibility shim that allows Docker to use iptables APIs/ABIs.

Going even further, pretty much everything in the ecosystem (k8s, etc.) assumes it's running on top of a Linux kernel including a number of management APIs that are not (completely) emulated on FreeBSD.

While I would love to see proper Docker support in FreeBSD, I’m not sure its even the right thing to aim for. In Docker production environments, people generally try to pare down the host OS to the absolute minimum, and at that point, what benefit would you derive from FreeBSD as a host?

Similarly, why would you want to run FreeBSD-ABI containers, specifically? One of the benefits of the container ecosystem is that there are many ready-made images you can build on. Having to re-invent all of this seems of little benefit to me.

Just my 2 cents,
Stefan

-- 
Stefan Bethke <stb at lassitu.de>   Fon +49 151 14070811