Multi-platform images?

[jacob-carlborg]

Are there any plans to support multi-platform images using QEMU? Docker Desktop comes bundled with QEMU and can run images of non-native architectures. OrbStack claims to be a drop-in replacement for Docker Desktop but multi-platform images are not supported. It's not even on the feature comparison list, as far as I can see.

[kdrag0n]

Already supported since the beginning: https://docs.orbstack.dev/docker/#intel-x86-emulation

If something's not working, please open an issue.

[jacob-carlborg]

@kdrag0n I'm referring to the other architectures supported by Docker Desktop, like RISC-V, MIPS, PowerPC and so on. Example using OrbStack:

 $ docker run -it --rm --platform linux/riscv64 debian:unstable-slim                                       08:32:42
exec /usr/bin/bash: exec format error

[kdrag0n]

Which specific architectures are you looking for? Happy to add them in the next version — just figured that they're not worth adding until someone asks for them due to the binary size.

[jacob-carlborg]

Ideally all of the architectures supported by QEMU. But if I recall correctly there's a hard coded list of supported platforms somewhere in the Docker code base, this one I believe [1]. I don't know if OrbStack uses that code. I have a project supporting ppc64le, riscv64, mips64el and i386. At least those would be nice. If you're concerned about binary size, perhaps an alternative would be to download QEMU for a given architecture on demand. Either if one could explicitly select architectures in the GUI or if it could be handled automatically when a container is created from an image of an architecture not already present.

[1] https://github.com/docker-library/bashbrew/blob/7a58081e4f08c8581ccf24275dc8cb5b6bc4f47d/architecture/oci-platform.go#L14-L27

[kdrag0n]

Added for the next version. All common Docker image architectures will be supported.

[jacob-carlborg]

Thanks.