Create docker image on Apple Silicon M1 Mac

#devops #docker #apple #m1

My biggest pain while moving to Apple Silicon M1 chip mac book was to create a docker build that would work on all the machines. It took some time for me to figure out how I can create docker images and share on docker hub that would work across different platforms.

By default Docker on M1 macbook would create linux/arm64 images, which would work only on the machines that are using ARM architecture. But intel based machines uses AMD architecture. As a result docker images built on m1 macbook might not work on intel based machines.

It might not even work on gcloud / aws k8s clusters 😄

But the good part is that m1 chip macbook supports linux/amd64 images, so we might only need to build docker images using linux/amd64.

Let me demonstrate an example here:

Consider you have a Golang Application and you need Docker image for that

So your Dockerfile might look like

FROM golang:1.16-alpine as builder
WORKDIR /app
COPY . .

RUN go build && \
    chmod 777 docker-demo

FROM alpine:latest
WORKDIR /root/
COPY --from=builder /app/docker-demo .
CMD [ "./docker-demo" ]

Note this is just an example you can have any Dockerfile😄

Now the command to build should add --platform flag with the correct platform that you want to build docker image for.

Example

docker build --platform linux/amd64 -t lakhansamani/docker-demo .

Thats all 😅
Now you can publish your docker image on docker hub and share with people.

You can find demo code on this github repository

Top comments (11)

Pavan Belagatti • Jun 3 '22

Man, you saved so much time. Thanks

Mushi123 • Nov 23 '21

what about running images, on mac m1, that were built on linux/amd64? Specifically, I set up Github Actions so my docker builds are happening on the Github server, which I am guessing are doing linux/amd64 builds. When I pull the image and try to run it, it runs into this error:
The requested image's platform (linux/amd64) does not match the detected host platform (linux/arm64/v8) and no specific platform was requested

Any suggestions?

Lakhan Samani • Nov 23 '21

Haven't seen any such issues until your docker image uses some native api's
If its public image can you share Docker file + image name. I can take look into it.

Brooks DuBois • Jun 28 '22

It's happening with Micronaut, any ideas are appreciated.

try just getting micronaut and building a simple web app to serve you an index.html, then when you try and do dockerBuild from gradle you'll see the v8 issue.