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

First, download and unzip/untar the release for your system. Here are x86_64 binaries for mac, linux, windows.

After expanding the archive, you can find the docker CLI executable at ./docker/docker - move that file into your path, and you're done.

If you're specifically looking to install the docker CLI into a docker image, here's my Dockerfile command to do so:

ENV DOCKERVERSION=18.03.1-ce
RUN curl -fsSLO https://download.docker.com/linux/static/stable/x86_64/docker-${DOCKERVERSION}.tgz \
  && tar xzvf docker-${DOCKERVERSION}.tgz --strip 1 \
                 -C /usr/local/bin docker/docker \
  && rm docker-${DOCKERVERSION}.tgz

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