Stevedore

Overview

This project aims to provide a frictionless Docker experience for Windows Containers.

Stevedore can be used as a replacement for Docker Desktop, DockerMsftProvider or Mirantis Container Runtime.

Only Windows Containers are supported.

Bundled components

Docker Engine
Docker Compose
docker-credential-wincred

Supported OSes

Windows 10 starting with version 1809 (build 17763)
Windows 11
Windows Server 2019, 2022

Installation

Manual

Download MSI installer
Double-click on it
Next-next-next
Reboot your computer. This is needed to finish installation of Windows Containers feature and to add your user to docker-users group so user can access Docker service.

Chocolatey

Stevedore is available via Chocolatey package manager. If you already have Chocolatey installed, you can just run the following command from elevated console:

choco install stevedore

Then reboot.

WinGet

winget install stevedore

Then reboot.

Advanced: Command-line install options

Stevedore installer supports several command-line options that may be handy to configure unattended installations.

Basic usage: msiexec /i c:\path\to\stevedore.msi.

For quiet (non-interactive) installation add /quiet option.

If you only want to install specific Stevedore features, use ADDLOCAL=Feature1,Feature2,Feature3 syntax.

List of available MSI features for ADDLOCAL

FeatureHyperV installs Hyper-V support. It allows running containers with Hyper-V isolation.

You can also pass custom installation properties to Stevedore installer using PROPERTY=value syntax.

List of available MSI properties

INSTALLDIR=%ProgramFiles%\Stevedore specifies directory where Stevedore executable files will be installed
SERVICENAME=stevedore specifies Windows service name

When installing Stevedore via Chocolatey, use this syntax: choco install stevedore --install-arguments="ADDLOCAL=Feature1,Feature2,Feature3 PROPERTY=value /quiet"

Usage

After installation and reboot, docker command should be available on PATH and ready to use.

You may try docker run --rm hello-world from a command line to confirm that everything was set up properly.

In order to communicate with Docker engine, users needs to be in docker-users group. Upon installation, Stevedore automatically adds installing user to docker-users. If you need other users to also access Docker engine, you will need to add them manually. You can use Add-LocalGroupMember PowerShell commandlet for that.

Docker Compose

Stevedore installs two flavors of Docker Compose.

You can use Docker Compose V2 via docker compose command.

You can also use Docker Compose V1 compatibility mode via docker-compose command.

Configuration and data files

Stevedore stores configuration and runtime data files for Windows containers under %ProgramData%\Docker directory.

Building from source

Install Rust
Install WiX Toolset either manually or by running choco install wixtoolset if you have Chocolatey
Install Visual Studio 2019 or 2022. Enable "Desktop development with C++" workload.
Clone Stevedore Git repository
Run cargo install cargo-wix to install cargo-wix
Run cargo wix --nocapture in repository root. Ready-to-use MSI package will be built in <repo>/target/wix directory.

Where Linux containers support is gone?

Back in summer 2021, when this project was started, there were no known alternatives to Docker Desktop. Container Desktop didn’t exist yet, and Rancher Desktop just released initial 0.1.0 release.

Today, things are very different. Rancher Desktop provides both Docker and Kubernetes support, with a very advanced UI. Stevedore is very unlikely to even come closer to Rancher Desktop functionality due to limited developer resources and lack of motivation.

Thus, starting with 0.10.0 release, Stevedore focuses on its primary goal - providing a convenient way to install Docker for Windows containers.

If you want to run Linux containers, consider one of these projects:

Rancher Desktop (Windows + Linux + Mac)
Container Desktop (Windows-only)
Colima (Mac-only)

slonopotamus / stevedore