Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it • Hacker News Board

Re: Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it

#91

Post by kdrag0n » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:23 AM UTC

jitl wrote: post #86

maccard wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the tradeoffs?

It cost money sounds like the big one

That's fair, but I think the value proposition is there for some :)

I'm honestly not sure how pricing and licensing will work yet, but there will be some way to try it for free. Maybe something like Docker Desktop: free for personal use, license required for companies? That seems like a risky bet as an indie dev.

There's also the whole question of one-time purchases vs. subscriptions. Subscriptions seem like the optimal model for this, so I'm not sure how to accommodate people who just don't like them.

Would love to hear if you have any thoughts on how it could be done to reach as many users as possible.

Re: Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it

#92

Post by trillic » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:24 AM UTC

silverwind wrote: post #28

dijit wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the 'DOCKER_HOST' variable (and the fact that all SDK's seem to support it) is honestly the greatest bloody thing in the entire ecosystem. My workflow for the past 3 years with Docker has been: set up some desktop machine somewhere, configure docker, configure ssh like normal: set DOCKER_HOST=ssh:// on my laptop. Docker responds as if it's local, but I get absurd build/fetch speedup (since the wired connection is fas…

I assume port forwarding would be a pain in such a setup, right?

The above commenter claims they're using Tailscale, a zero-conf VPN, which negates any port forwarding issues.

Re: Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it

#93

Post by trillic » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:28 AM UTC

pak9rabid wrote: post #71

wood-porch wrote: post #63

A project I made solved this by running docker on AWS and doing two-way file sync on changes. Runs quite nicely and transparently. https://github.com/lime-green/remote-docker-aws Lots of benefits: speed, battery, fan noise

And money

I use a shitbox of a thinkpad with my dev environment in the cloud, but they run Linux so I can just as easily run it locally if I have no connection. I buy them for $300-500 on eBay, upgrade them to at least 16gb of RAM and a 1TB Samsung SATA SSD. I have 2 cold spares ready to go, credentials loaded, just need to update and sync a few git repos. 14 inch 1080p IPS displays, i5 processor, 16GB of RAM.

The money I save not paying for Apple laptops could pay for a crazy overpowered dev VM until the end of time.

I used Apple laptops for about 10 years until about 5 keyboard replacements with the butterfly switch debacle.

Re: Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it

#94

Post by judge2020 » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:31 AM UTC

kdrag0n wrote: post #91

jitl wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cost money sounds like the big one

That's fair, but I think the value proposition is there for some :) I'm honestly not sure how pricing and licensing will work yet, but there will be some way to try it for free. Maybe something like Docker Desktop: free for personal use, license required for companies? That seems like a risky bet as an indie dev. There's also the whole question of one-time purchases vs. subscriptions. Subscriptions seem like the opti…

> Maybe something like Docker Desktop: free for personal use, license required for companies? That seems like a risky bet as an indie dev.

That's how it works currently.

Re: Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it

#95

Post by mccolin » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:35 AM UTC

With VirtioFS on the scene I just don’t have this experience anymore. Docker for Mac is significantly faster than it used to be, particularly when using named volumes.

Mutagen also improved the experience but I prefer VirtioFS as it’s “built-in”

Re: Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it

#96

Post by westoque » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:37 AM UTC

this is one of the reasons i changed my OS to linux since docker there works natively. i believe there will always be a bottleneck for peak performance on macOS until we are able to run natively, not virtualized.

Re: Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it

#97

Post by aliljet » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:39 AM UTC

Have any of you tried to chase the microvm train instead of docker on MacOS? Thus far, it feels like this is a deeply lost cause with a passing hope that somehow you can hack a solution to nested virtualization and drop into a KVM-style experience on a guest vm and then go a layer deeper with microvms on top of that guest. Oofff. What an absolute horror show.

Re: Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it

#98

Post by devmunchies » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:42 AM UTC

jrib wrote: post #30

princevegeta89 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Mac is the best in terms of hardware and portability and for compliance stuff

yeah, I really wanted to buy a Linux laptop. I highly value battery life though and the m1 chip doesn't really have a competitor in that department.

> the m1 chip doesn't really have a competitor in that department

the m2 chip :)

Re: Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it

#99

Post by RockRobotRock » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:45 AM UTC

EdwardDiego wrote: post #2

My preferred fix: don't develop in Docker.

This is an unhelpful and useless comment

Re: Docker on MacOS is slow and how to fix it

#100

Post by rubyist5eva » Fri, Dec 23, 2022, 2:50 AM UTC

jscheel wrote: post #42

Docker is cripplingly slow on MacOS. I have a maxed out 16" mbp... starting rspec on our app takes 55-60 seconds. Compare that to my coworkers on Linux and Windows, who both see sub 10 second boots, and it's absolutely impossible to be ok with those numbers.

I have a nearly maxed out Mac Studio and my experience was the same, until I got my work to fork out a license for parallels and I just installed docker in an ubuntu VM and configured my DOCKER_HOST on the host to talk to the vm. Now it's crazy fast.