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Comment by notduncansmith | Hacker News Reader

It solves a very specific problem - using Docker on OS X is a giant pain. It's pretty easy on something like Ubuntu, but for Mac the typical solution involves Vagrant + a VM, so startup times are slow, it eats a lot of memory and CPU, etc.

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I disagree that "using Docker on OS X is a giant pain". I don't really see how this is more than a GUI that works with boot2docker and docker. Kitematic appears to be using boot2docker under the hood. I think using boot2docker is very simple. Once boot2docker is running, as far as I can tell, using docker is the same experience people have on linux.

mounting host directories into containers with -v is one place b2d definitely hurts more than running on linux directly.

The options appear to be:

1. Don't do that

2. Mount something via samba into the b2d vm, then -v it into your container

3. Use virtualbox directory sharing (which won't work properly/at all)

It looks like Kitematic uses VirtualBox, a VM.

Aside from the GUI, how does it differ from Boot2Docker, which is what the Docker web site tells you to use on a Mac?

- Automatically creates a folder under ~/Kitematic for each Volume. - One click NSEnter into any container. - Any container can be accessed at <container_name>.dev (automatically sets up a DNS for you, so you can connect a database too using that URL).

We're really just trying to make Docker easier to use for Mac right now.

Ok, thanks. Maybe list some of those on your web page or GitHub readme?

how about attaching volumes?

Hey, folders will be created under ~/Kitematic/app_name/volume_name, and the contents of the volume will be sync'ed across the folder and the container.

We do that. [Although primitive at the moment]

Oh, thanks, I thought it was an image manager (which I could use). I guess you'd have a problem with Docker on OS X, given the BSD-based kernel...

Kitematic can be used as an image manager.

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