Orbstack

This is a quick weekend post looking at a tool (just for macOS unfortunately).

When it comes to running containers, docker is the most widely used tool with millions of container images available on the public Docker hub. If you are not familiar with containers, check out a previous post to get an introduction. Running containers on macOS is not the best experience compared to even a simple Linux server like a Raspberry Pi. In the past, I have explored other options such as Colima.

I found an app for macOS that makes running containers easy and provides a nice interface to do it all while letting you keep using the same docker and docker compose commands. I heard about Orbstack on Reddit and it is easy to get started and run a container in under 5 minutes.

Installing on macOS

This app is only available on macOS at the time of this post. If you are just running a mac at home, at this time it is free for personal use.

You can download the app from the official site: https://orbstack.dev/download

Installing with homebrew

On macOS I recommend installing homebrew which is a package manager for macOS.

Once you have homebrew available, install with one command:

brew install orbstack

Starting a container

Running a container

This will pull the image docker.io/nginx:alpine from the public Docker Hub.

docker run -dt -p 8000:80/tcp nginx:alpine

List running containers

Enter this to see what containers you have running on your system:

docker ps

You should see something like this:

CONTAINER ID   IMAGE          COMMAND                  CREATED          STATUS          PORTS                                     NAMES
6f00088f2b14   nginx:alpine   "/docker-entrypoint.…"   32 seconds ago   Up 32 seconds   0.0.0.0:8000->80/tcp, [::]:8000->80/tcp   cranky_banzai

Delete a container

If you want to remove a container, enter this:

docker rm 6f00088f2b14

You can also reference containers by their NAME attribute:

docker rm cranky_banzai

Building a container

Once Orbstack is working, you can also use it to build OCI compatible container images. Here is an example JavaScript server that we can build into a container image and run with Orbstack.

Create the Following files

First make a package.json file to include the library dependencies.

{
  "dependencies": {
    "express": "*"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "start": "node index.js"
  }
}

Create a javascript file index.js

const express = require('express')

const app = express();

app.get('/', (req, res)=> {
     res.send("Hello from a container built with orbstack")
});
app.listen(8080, () => {
     console.log("Listening on port 8080");
});

Create a Dockerfile in the same directory as these other files.

FROM node:alpine
WORKDIR usr/app
COPY ./ ./
RUN npm install
CMD ["npm", "start"]

Build the Dockerfile

Run this in the same directory as the code:

docker build --tag hello .

Run built image

Now run the image that you built:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 hello

Now connect to the web server in a browser or terminal and you should see the message configured in index.js

$ curl localhost:8080
Hello from a container built with orbstack

or visit http://localhost:8080 in a browser

Orbstack UI

Once you have a container running you can view it in the UI:

Create a new container in the UI

When you have Orbstack app open in the Containers view, you can select the + icon or CMD + N to add a new container:

Select Create and Start to create a new container.

Open the container in Finder

When Orbstack is running, there is a network mounted directory on your mac that has containers, images, volumes and Linux machines if you create those. You can press CMD + O from the Containers menu to open the container in Finder.

These files are only available when Orbstack is running as it is presented to your mac as a NFS mount.

Clean up

To remove everything that you started following this article:

Stop all containers:

docker stop $(docker ps -a -q)

Remove all containers:

docker rm $(docker ps -a -q)

In the Orbstack UI, a container can be deleted with the icon that looks like a trash bin.