Set up your environment

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

In this step you install the Docker Cloud CLI so interact with the service using your command shell. This tutorial uses CLI commands to complete actions.

Install the Docker Cloud CLI

Install the docker-cloud CLI using the package manager for your system.

Run the CLI in a Docker container

If you have Docker Engine installed locally, you can run the following docker command in your shell regardless of which operating system you are using.

docker run dockercloud/cli -h

This command runs the docker-cloud CLI image in a container for you. Learn more about how to use this container here.

Install for Linux or Windows

You can install the CLI locally using the pip package manager, which is a package manager for Python applications.

If you already have 2.x or Python 3.x installed, you probably have pip and setuptools, but will need to upgrade per the instructions here.
If you do not have Python or pip installed, you can either install Python or use this standalone pip installer. You do not need Python for our purposes, just pip.

Now that you have pip, open a shell or terminal window and run the following command to install the docker-cloud CLI:

$ pip install docker-cloud

Install on macOS

We recommend installing Docker CLI for macOS using Homebrew. If you don’t have brew installed, follow the instructions here: http://brew.sh

Once Homebrew is installed, open Terminal and run the following command:

$ brew install docker-cloud

Note: You can also use pip to install on macOS, but we suggest Homebrew since it is a package manager designed for the Mac.

Validate the CLI installation

Check that the CLI installed correctly, using the docker-cloud -v command. (This command is the same for every platform.)

$ docker-cloud -v
docker-cloud 1.0.0

You can now use the docker-cloud CLI commands from your shell.

The documentation for the Docker Cloud CLI tool and API here.

Log in

Use the login CLI command to log in to Docker Cloud. Use the username and password you used when creating your Docker ID. If you use Docker Hub, you can use the same username and password you use to log in to Docker Hub.

$ docker login
Username: my-username
Password:
Login succeeded!

You must log in to continue this tutorial.

Set your username as an environment variable

For simplicity in this tutorial, we use an environment variable for your Docker Cloud username. If you will be copying and pasting the tutorial commands, set the environment variable using the command below. (Change my-username to your username.)

If you don’t want to do this, make sure you substitute your username for $DOCKER_ID_USER whenever you see it in the example commands.

$ export DOCKER_ID_USER=my-username

If you are running the tutorial with an organization’s resources:

By default, the docker-cloud CLI uses your default user namespace, meaning the repositories, nodes, and services associated with your individual Docker ID account name. To use the CLI to interact with objects that belong to an organization, prefix these commands with DOCKERCLOUD_NAMESPACE=my-organization, or set this variable as in the example below.

$ export DOCKERCLOUD_NAMESPACE=my-organization

See the CLI documentation for more information.

Next up, we’ll Prepare the app.

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