Is it possible to install only the docker cli and not the daemon

Question

I want to have docker CLI to connect to remote daemon but do I need to install the whole engine including daemon on the local machine?

Answer 1

If you want to install Docker in Linux, then in the newest 1.12.0 release, Docker daemon and Docker client are in separate binary files.

This has been mentioned in release log:

Split the binary into two: docker (client) and dockerd (daemon) #20639

If you are installing Docker in Mac, then Mac OS binary is client-only: resource