⚠️ This CLI is in beta: The installation process, commands, and flags will change in future releases.

Docker has extended its strategic collaboration with Microsoft to simplify code to cloud application development for developers and development teams by more closely integrating with Azure Container Instances (ACI).

The new ACI experience from local VS Code and Docker Desktop development to remote deployment in ACI creates a tighter integration between Docker and Microsoft developer technologies provides the following productivity benefits to developers:

• Easily log into Azure directly from the Docker CLI
• Trigger an ACI cloud container service environment to be set up automatically with easy to use defaults and no infrastructure overhead
• Switch from a local context to a cloud context to quickly and easily run applications
• Simplifies single container and multi-container application development via the Compose specification allowing a developer to invoke fully Docker compatible commands seamlessly for the first time natively within a cloud container service

To learn more, take a look at the announcement blog post

• Where's the source code?
• When using an ACI context:
  • Why can't I list images?
  • How do I build images?
  • Why aren't all the existing Docker commands and flags available?
  • Why can't I map container ports?

The ACI integration is built into Docker Desktop Edge.

The Linux installation script and manual install instructions have been tested with a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04.

• Docker 19.03 or later

You can install the new CLI using the install script:

curl -L https://github.com/docker/aci-integration-beta/releases/download/v0.1.4/install.sh | sh

You can download the Docker ACI Integration CLI using the following command:

curl -Lo docker-aci https://github.com/docker/aci-integration-beta/releases/download/v0.1.4/docker-linux-amd64

You will then need to make it executable:

chmod +x docker-aci

To enable using the local Docker Engine and to use existing Docker contexts, you will need to have the existing Docker CLI as com.docker.cli somewhere in your PATH. You can do this by creating a symbolic link from the existing Docker CLI.

ln -s /path/to/existing/docker /directory/in/PATH/com.docker.cli

Note: The PATH environment variable is a colon separated list of directories with priority from left to right. You can view it using echo $PATH. You can find the path to the existing Docker CLI using which docker. You may need root permissions to make this link.

On a fresh install of Ubuntu 20.04 with Docker Engine already installed:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin
$ which docker
/usr/bin/docker
$ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/docker /usr/local/bin/com.docker.cli

You can verify that this is working by checking that the new CLI works with the default context:

$ ./docker-aci --context default ps
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND             CREATED             STATUS              PORTS               NAMES
$ echo $?
0

To make this CLI with ACI integration your default Docker CLI, you must move it to a directory in your PATH with higher priority than the existing Docker CLI.

Again on a fresh Ubuntu 20.04:

$ which docker
/usr/bin/docker
$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin
$ sudo mv docker-aci /usr/local/bin/docker
$ which docker
/usr/local/bin/docker
$ docker version
...
 Azure integration  0.1.4
...

To remove this CLI, you need to remove the binary you downloaded and com.docker.cli from your PATH. If you installed using the script, this can be done as follows:

sudo rm /usr/local/bin/docker /usr/local/bin/com.docker.cli