Docker on OS X with batteries included, aimed at making a more pleasant local development experience. Runs on top of docker-machine.

• Faster volume sharing using NFS rather than built-in virtualbox/vmware file shares. A medium-sized Rails app boots in 5 seconds, rather than 30 seconds using vmware file sharing, or 90 seconds using virtualbox file sharing.
• Filesystem events work on mounted volumes. Edit files on your host, and see guard/webpack/etc pick up the changes immediately.
• Easy access to running containers using built-in DNS and HTTP proxy.

Dinghy creates its own VM using docker-machine, it will not modify your existing docker-machine VMs.

Eventually docker-machine may have a rich enough plugin system that dinghy can just become a plugin to docker-machine. For now, dinghy runs as a wrapper around docker-machine, shelling out to create the VM and using launchd to start the various services such as NFS and DNS.

If you previously used a version of Dinghy that ran on top of Vagrant, read this.

First the prerequisites:

1. OS X Yosemite (10.10) (Mavericks has a known issue, see #6)
2. Homebrew
3. Either VirtualBox or VMware Fusion.

If using VirtualBox, version 5.0+ is strongly recommended, and you'll need the VirtualBox Expansion Pack installed.

Then:

$ brew install https://github.com/codekitchen/dinghy/raw/latest/dinghy.rb

This will install the docker client and docker-machine using Homebrew, as well.

You can specify provider (virtualbox or vmware), memory and CPU options when creating the VM. See available options:

$ dinghy help create

Then create the VM and start services with:

$ dinghy create --provider virtualbox

Once the VM is up, you'll get instructions to add some Docker-related environment variables, so that your Docker client can contact the Docker server inside the VM. I'd suggest adding these to your .bashrc or equivalent.

Sanity check!

$ docker run -it redis

$ dinghy help
Commands:
  dinghy create          # create the docker-machine VM
  dinghy destroy         # stop and delete all traces of the VM
  dinghy halt            # stop the VM and services
  dinghy help [COMMAND]  # Describe available commands or one specific command
  dinghy ip              # get the VM's IP address
  dinghy restart         # restart the VM and services
  dinghy shellinit       # returns env variables to set, should be run like $(dinghy shellinit)
  dinghy ssh [args...]   # ssh to the VM
  dinghy ssh-config      # print ssh configuration for the VM
  dinghy status          # get VM and services status
  dinghy up              # start the Docker VM and services
  dinghy upgrade         # upgrade the boot2docker VM to the newest available
  dinghy version         # display dinghy version

Dinghy installs a DNS server listening on the private interface, which resolves *.docker to the Dinghy VM. For instance, if you have a running container that exposes port 3000 to the host, and you like to call it myrailsapp, you can connect to it at myrailsapp.docker port 3000, e.g. http://myrailsapp.docker:3000/ or telnet myrailsapp.docker 3000.

Dinghy will run a HTTP proxy inside a docker container in the VM, giving you easy access to web apps running in other containers. This uses the excellent nginx-proxy docker tool.

The proxy will take a few moments to download the first time you launch the VM.

Any containers that you want proxied, make sure the VIRTUAL_HOST environment variable is set, either with the -e option to docker or the environment hash in docker-compose. For instance setting VIRTUAL_HOST=myrailsapp.docker will make the container's exposed port available at http://myrailsapp.docker/. If the container exposes more than one port, set VIRTUAL_PORT to the http port number, as well.

See the nginx-proxy documentation for further details.

If you use docker-compose, you can add VIRTUAL_HOST to the environment hash in docker-compose.yml, for instance:

web:
  build: .
  ports:
    - "3000:3000"
  environment:
    VIRTUAL_HOST: myrailsapp.docker

Dinghy shares your home directory (/Users/<you>) over NFS, using a private network interface between your host machine and the Dinghy Docker Host. This sharing is done using a separate NFS daemon, not the system NFS daemon.

Be aware that there isn't a lot of security around NFSv3 file shares. We've tried to lock things down as much as possible (this NFS daemon doesn't even listen on other interfaces, for example).

To update Dinghy itself, run:

$ brew reinstall https://github.com/codekitchen/dinghy/raw/latest/dinghy.rb

To update the Docker VM, run:

$ dinghy upgrade

This will run docker-machine upgrade and then restart the dinghy services.

You can install Dinghy's master branch with:

$ brew reinstall --HEAD https://github.com/codekitchen/dinghy/raw/master/dinghy.rb

This branch may be less stable, so this isn't recommended in general.

• https://github.com/docker/machine
• https://github.com/markusn/unfs3
• https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew
• http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html
• https://github.com/jwilder/nginx-proxy