Show HN: Container-compose – A Docker-compose like tool for Apple containers
12 comments
·June 15, 2025fnordian
I hope apple will deliver a docker compatible api soon, so that all the existing tools will just work.
cosmotic
Or Docker migrate to the new API, like they did with QEMU to Virtualization Framework.
daft_pink
Hoping that VSCode supports Apple Containers in a similar way to it supporting Docker Containers. I’ve tried Podman to use less resources on my Mac, but found that the developer tooling in things like VSCode makes Docker a bit sticky.
cedws
Is the container CLI actually intended for end users? My impression was that it's just a demo project showing off the Containerization API. I'm guessing that BuildKit will eventually support Apple's container runtime via the Containerization API.
yodon
Any thoughts or insights into why Apple didn't ship docker-compose support?
figmert
It took Podman a good 2 or so years to develop a good docker compatible http api. I presume that's why. There's no point in coming out with all of the features when they can release with some support, and add on top of it.
WhyNotHugo
Even today, some docker-compose features still don’t work with podman. There’s just an absurd amount of subtleties and edge cases, but pretty much all my usages hit one of these or another.
Noghartt
To be honest, I'm not sure why they didn't already release it supporting a compose-like tool. But my hypothesis is that considering they release a v0.1.0, they tried to be lean on their CLI and maybe they're building something on top of it.
elisiariocouto
Excellent work! Any reason why don’t implement this as a plugin for the container CLI?
Noghartt
Thanks!
> Any reason why don’t implement this as a plugin for the container CLI?
I did a different CLI because, considering that Apple released their v0.1.0, I'm not sure if they're working in some kind of official support for compose YAMLs.
With that in mind, I tried to avoid coupling it into the container CLI, to avoid injecting any kind of breaking change or something else which could cause any issue in the future.
develatio
How does networking between several “services” (containers) work?
Noghartt
The container opens a gateway and each container provides its own local IP (e.g. 192.168.64.2), from what I understood, every services known host machine and can communicate with each other.
On my current implementation, I didn't work with DNS/Network Resolution because I need to understand better what I can/can't do with the API Apple provides, so the only things it does is handling the port mapping using `socat`, as the docs recommends.
Hey HN, recently Apple release their own container manager tooling, but it's missing a "compose-like" tool.
I'm building this CLI as a side-project and a way to help on the usage with the main tool.
It's in a early version, then at the moment I'm trying to be as much as possible compatible with `docker-compose` config file, and in the current version we're supporting two commands: `up` and `down`.