How can I detect if docker for mac is installed?

Question

I have some makefiles where most of the stuff should run without configuration. These makefiles have used docker-machine in the past.

Is there a way to detect in bash if the user is using docker desktop for mac instead of docker-machine ?

Answer 1

The cleanest way I found so far is:

[[ $(docker version --format "{{.Server.KernelVersion}}") == *-moby ]]

Answer 2

The best way is to check for the existence of the DOCKER environment variables:

• DOCKER_HOST
• DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME
• DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY
• DOCKER_CERT_PATH

All four of these are set when eval $(docker-machine env) is run and are required for use with docker-machine.

The beta does not require any of them being set and in fact requires you to unset them in order to function properly.

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You can also do a check in the docker info command looking for "moby" (the name of the docker for mac VM):

docker info | grep -q moby && echo "Docker for mac beta" || echo "Not docker for mac beta"

This is going to be dependent on consistency in the docker info results, however.