Docker module for nix-darwin

Important!

For some reason this does not work anymore for me. The VM does not start at all when I enable docker. Maybe I'll fix it someday, but it's hard to debug. For now I just use lima for docker on Mac and start it on-demand.

Before enable

You may need to enable to linux-builder without this addon first (nix.linux-builder.enable = true). This is because you need some machine to build linux configuration on darwin.

Usage

Import the module to your configuration, then enable with:

# just an example
{ inputs, ... }:
{
  imports = [
    inputs.darwin-docker.darwinModules.docker
  ];

  virtualisation.docker = {
    enable = true;
  };
}

Then rebuild your config, make sure DOCKER_HOST is set. If not set it manually:

export DOCKER_HOST="tcp://127.0.0.1:2375"

then run:

$ docker info

It should connect and print relevant info.

See the module code for more options.

Tip: if you have a NixOS config for docker, you should be able to do something like this:

• in linux.nix

{
  virtualisation.docker = {
    enable = true;
    autoPrune = {
      enable = true;
      flags = [ "--all" ];
      dates = "weekly";
    };
  };
}

• in darwin.nix:

{ pkgs, inputs, ... }:
{
  imports = [
    inputs.darwin-docker.darwinModules.docker
  ];

  virtualisation.docker = {
    enable = true;
    config = import ./linux.nix;
  };
}

Notes

• why? because if you're already using nix-darwin, then this VM will be very lightweight in terms of disk space and very fast to start
• this builds on top of nix-builder module and darwin-builder VM
• it runs as a daemon in the background
• docker is exposed on tcp://127.0.0.1:2375 on the host system
• DOCKER_HOST env variable is set to the above address
• configuration/customization can be easilty done via virtualisation.docker.config - this gets directly passed to the underlying NixOS VM config as a module
• ssh access directly to the machine should be possible with: sudo ssh linux-builder