[Docker Open Source] Deprecate Docker App

[chris-crone]

Tell us about your request
The Docker App project started in mid-2018 with the goal of providing a packaging solution for Compose-based applications for our enterprise customers. With the company split at the end of 2019, we found that Docker App didn’t have a clear deployment story anymore. This led us to pause the project. We would now like to formally deprecate the project.

If you are an active user of Docker App, please let us know here about what you're using it for and how it's helping you.

Which service(s) is this request for?
Docker App

Tell us about the problem you're trying to solve. What are you trying to do, and why is it hard?
Introduce more clarity about which open source tools we are developing actively, focus on tools that are being used and have active communities.

Are you currently working around the issue?
We are not maintaining this actively, but have not made it clear what the status and roadmap is.

If you'd like to continue using CNAB for packaging your applications, check out https://porter.sh

[carolynvs]

If anyone has questions about CNAB or migrating to Porter, definitely reach out on our mailing list, slack or forum. I’m a maintainer for both and am happy to help out however I can.

[carolynvs]

Here is a tutorial that walks you through the migration. It took me about 5 minutes to swap from Docker App's bundle definition file to Porter's, so hopefully it's a smooth transition for others as well!

[Fuseteam]

i really liked the idea of packaging docker-compose apps in a single image, i'll checkout porter

[mat007]

https://github.com/docker/app has now been deprecated and archived.

[dberardo-com]

are there alternatives to Docker App out there other than Porter? The project seems to be losing interest from the community.

The choice of the name "Docker App" is a bit unfortunate since it makes google search much harder.

My use case is simple: i want to distribute docker applications on low-resource devices, where i cannot afford to install K8s / Helm. I thought Docker App could be a suitable candidate .. until it was deprecated.

Which tools can i use to achieve my goal? Another option could be using Puppet / Chef, but they come in with their own complexities ...

[prologic]

This is also unfortunate. I quite liked the way docker app was shaping up when it was introduced as a beta feature only a few releases back.

Porter I'm said to see looks like it's really geared/focused towards public cloud and all things k8s so it's completely unsuitable for my use cases.

[carolynvs]

@prologic Porter can work with any tool or environment really. People are using it for edge/iot, on-premise bare metal, VMs, containers and yeah kubernetes.

We have mixins out of the box for some common activities, and the set of mixins represent what people felt like contributing, not the limitations of what is supported. The Docker Compose mixin provides the same functionality as Docker App. If you need more and there isn't a custom mixin, you can always edit the Dockerfile to install the tools you need and write a bash script to use it.

I don't want to derail this thread with stuff about Porter, so if anyone has questions, please reach out on our mailing list, discussion forum or slack.

[prologic]

@carolynvs The problem I have with this is that Porter has basically become a tool for everything and everyone 😢

As I said here this is really disappointing to see this. I already use Terraform and Packer for a lot of our Infrastructure, I don't really need yet-another Infrastructure management tool (Porter).

That being said, I have a general question. Will the Docker Hub and OCI registries continue to support CNAB bundles aswas originallyy specified by this project and the CNAB / App bundle specification? If so, I'm going to revive this project as it directly solves my needs (or it did before Docker decided to drop the ball here :/)

Kind regards

[carolynvs]

Registries that support the OCI distribution spec work with CNAB and isn't something that needs to be explicitly supported.

[hammady]

I would like to voice my opinion about this deprecation. I tried Porter in my scenario but it doesn't perfectly fit my need. Here is a comparison between both and why I think the deprecation is sad:

1. docker app is native to docker, no need for further installations especially if you only want to run docker commands, porter requires a separate installation
2. docker app supports swarm out of the box, porter does not have a swarm mixin as of today and you are only left with docker run or docker compose up, both do not achieve any orchestration
3. docker app supports all known architectures that docker itself supports, porter only supports three so it has to be run on a separate machine, something not ideal for air-gapped environments (e.g. Raspberry Pis with limited connectivity).

[prologic]

I would like to voice my opinion about this deprecation. I tried Porter in my scenario but it doesn't perfectly fit my need. Here is a comparison between both and why I think the deprecation is sad:

1. docker app is native to docker, no need for further installations especially if you only want to run docker commands, porter requires a separate installation
2. docker app supports swarm out of the box, porter does not have a swarm mixin as of today and you are only left with docker run or docker compose up, both do not achieve any orchestration
3. docker app supports all known architectures that docker itself supports, porter only supports three so it has to be run on a separate machine, something not ideal for air-gapped environments (e.g. Raspberry Pis with limited connectivity).

My sentiments exactly. I also operate several non-small Swarm clusters and Porter is not a good fit for anything I need. That being said, I think we're in a bit of a hopeless position here with this particular issue. We may just have to band-together as a community and come up with a solution that works for our specific use-cases. If you're interested, feel free to teach out to me, I'm looking to solve this for my day job's needs as well as my own personal needs and that of several (growing) communities I manage as well.

[dberardo-com]

i honestly think that there is a lot of hype and research going on for cloud-level solutions (most importantly based around k8s) but the "edge" is a bit left behind.

Orchestrating containers / deployments in an low-resources, low-power based, and ethereogeneous environments (64bits, 32bits, etc..) seems not to be in the focus these days.

I find Porter useful in some of my applications but i agree with your opinion @prologic. Is anyone of you aware of not over-engineed alternatives to what we are looking for here? OR at least some project candidates?

Any blog articles on the matter?

[prologic]

I'm not aware of any other alternative solutions but I do plan to build one 👌

[hammady]

I'm not aware of any other alternative solutions but I do plan to build one 👌

If docker app is the right fit, what about taking its code outside docker core and maintaining our own plugin/cli?

[prologic]

I'm not aware of any other alternative solutions but I do plan to build one 👌

If docker app is the right fit, what about taking its code outside docker core and maintaining our own plugin/cli?

I haven't looked into doing that (yet); is that doable? If so, more than happy to spend my up and coming long weekend getting that codebase up-to-scratch.

[hammady]

I'm not aware of any other alternative solutions but I do plan to build one 👌

If docker app is the right fit, what about taking its code outside docker core and maintaining our own plugin/cli?

I haven't looked into doing that (yet); is that doable? If so, more than happy to spend my up and coming long weekend getting that codebase up-to-scratch.

I would say why not? Do you mean for licensing reasons? Maybe @chris-crone can answer?

[chris-crone]

Hi @hammady 👋

It's rewarding to hear that people love what we built with Docker App 😃

The Docker App code is Apache 2 licensed so you and others are welcome to use it so long as you respect the license. One thing to note is that you cannot use the "Docker" name for any fork as Docker Inc. has a trademark on it.

[chris-crone]

This is done, closing it out!