Five Steps to Setup a Docker Development Environment in OS X

Several weeks ago, I gave up on using boot2docker in favor of using DigitalOcean droplets. This time, I gave boot2docker another try because it had just released version 1.1.0 (same as Docker’s). This version fixes the problem I had with forwarding ports.

This tutorial will show you how to install boot2docker-cli and be able to send commands to a Docker daemon running on a virtual machine. Also, I’m assuming you’ve installed Go in your Mac.

• Install docker client and boot2docker-cli:

    $ brew install docker
  $ go get github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker-cli
  

• (recommended) Symlink boot2docker-cli:

  $ ln -s $GOPATH/bin/boot2docker-cli $GOPATH/bin/boot2docker

  As of this writing, I ran boot2docker version and it did not show the version information.

• Create the virtual machine:

  $ boot2docker init

• Boot up the virtual machine:

  $ boot2docker up

  If you’re running this command for the first time, boot2docker you will need to export $DOCKER_HOST to point to the VM.

• Verify (see screenshot):

  $ boot2docker ssh

  

boot2docker-cli creates two network interfaces (one will be used for NAT and another will be used for port forwarding on a private network):