Docker-Desktop adds ~/.docker/bin/ to my $PATH without telling me

[JannikArndt]

After updating to Docker Desktop 4.15.0, it added

source /Users/<username>/.docker/init-bash.sh || true # Added by Docker Desktop

to my .zshrc. It also created .config/fish/config.fish, .bash_profile and .bashrc with the same line.

The bin folder is currently empty, which makes this even more suspicious.

I consider this bad behavior. Apps are not supposed to change my $PATH without at least telling me or mentioning it in the Release Notes.

[jaminthorns]

I just encountered this and have the same opinion. Modifying my shell initialization scripts automatically is pretty terrible behavior. What's worse is that if I change a single character of the line it adds, then the line gets added again. On top of all that, this happpens every time Docker Desktop is started. I've never had a program behave so aggressively before.

Since all Docker Desktop is doing is ensuring that some binaries are on the PATH, what it should be doing instead is symlinking those binaries to /usr/local/bin, and that operation should be explicitly allowed/initiated by the user. VS Code takes this approach with its code binary, and it achieves the same goal in a much more appropriate way.

[christophermclellan]

Hi @JannikArndt and @jaminthorns ! Firstly, apologies for this. We're looking to address these issues asap. In particular, ensuring that the user explicitly authorises the operation to adjust the $PATH. I wonder if I could schedule ~30 mins with each of you to get some feedback on how we're thinking of solving this via a new flow ? @JannikArndt i see you have an email on your profile so I'll reach out directly ! @jaminthorns - my email is chris.mclellan@docker.com, i'd love to hear from you, if you're able to spare the time ! Thanks again for the feedback.

[goerge]

@christophermclellan Could you please explain why Docker is adding it's own bin folder to the path although it's empty?

[gimbo]

@christophermclellan wrote:

We're looking to address these issues asap.

Any progress on this?

[christophermclellan]

@gimbo this will be resolved via the new install flow for Desktop v4.18, which is due to be released this week.

[gimbo]

LGTM.

I just shut down v4.16, removed the lines it had added from ~/.zshrc/~/.profile, installed v4.18, and started it — and it didn't add them back in. I see that in Settings/Advanced it had auto-selected "User" configuration for the CLI tools, presumably because it detected they were already in ~/.docker/bin. So I just need to set up PATH in my way, and all is good.

Many thanks! 🙏

[christophermclellan]

Thanks for confirming @gimbo. I'll close this issue until further notice.

[docker-robott]

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