After announcing partnership with Docker, Microsoft has built a native Docker client for Windows. The command line interface (CLI) is fully compatible with the Docker client running on Linux.
On October 15, Jason Zander, CVP for Azure announced the partnership between Microsoft and Docker. Through this partnership, Microsoft and Docker plan to deliver the following –
- Investments in the next wave of Windows Server
- Open-source development of the Docker Engine for Windows Server
- Azure support for the Docker Open Orchestration APIs
- Federation of Docker Hub images in to the Azure Gallery and Portal
Docker will be integrated with the next version of Windows Server making it easy to run containers in Windows. As the first step towards that, Microsoft has shipped the Docker client for Windows. Developers can use the client to manage Docker containers running on Linux. Without this, developers had to run both Docker client and server in a Linux virtual machine running on Windows.
Docker client CLI is integrated into the official Docker GitHub repository under Pull Request#9113.
Ahmet Alp Balkan from Microsoft Azure team has published a step-by-step guide on compiling Docker client on Windows.