Colima — Docker & K8S for local development

A minimal setup for Docker along with Kubernetes on mac.
An alternative of Docker Desktop.

Github: https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

Colima Components:
Lima : Linux Virtual Machine (for macos) for running container runtimes.
K3s: Light weight K8S distribution.

Colima Architecture

Setup : A single node Kubernetes Cluster inside a VM along with a Container Runtime.

Colima CLI creates a VM and starts the container runtime along with k3s server binary (as a process) within the VM. The CLI also bootstraps the exposure of the container runtime api and Kubernetes api to the host transparently.

# Start colima env with docker and k3s
colima start --with-kubernetes --cpu 4 --memory 8
colima ssh    # ssh into lima VM
colima stop   # also saves the deployments in k3s

References:

Replacing Docker Desktop for Mac with Colima

GitHub - abiosoft/colima: Container runtimes on macOS (and Linux) with minimal setup

Lightweight Kubernetes

Getting started with colima