Running Docker Container in Github actions in Mac Runners

It's a pretty common need to run a docker container in a github action. Recently I was looking at one of my open source project and decided to move away from Travis CI to github actions for my CI pipeline. I had to run a docker container as part of this task.

The good thing is that the ubuntu runners comes with docker preinstalled. Windows and Mac due to licensing of docker enterprice does not come preinstalled. So you will have to do some steps on your own to install docker.

You can have a look here its pretty straightforward.

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: 'macos-latest'

    steps:
      - name: Install docker
        run: |
         mkdir -p ~/.docker/machine/cache
         curl -Lo ~/.docker/machine/cache/boot2docker.iso https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/releases/download/v19.03.12/boot2docker.iso
         brew install docker docker-machine
         docker-machine create --driver virtualbox default
         docker-machine env default
      - name: Run container
        run: |
         eval "$(docker-machine env default)"

The above installs docker in a Mac os runner: credit. You can easily find such a script for windows as well online.

Now the remaining task is to run the docker container of your choice. Just need to add another run step.

jobs:
  run:  
    runs-on: 'ubuntu-latest'
    
    steps:
    - step 1 ...
    - step 2 ... 
    
    - name: Run Sonic container
      run: docker run -d -p 1491:1491 -v ${{ github.workspace }}/sonic.cfg:/etc/sonic.cfg valeriansaliou/sonic:v1.4.0
   
    - name: See running containers
      run: docker ps
    
    - ... rest of your steps

you can see your running containers in your git actions log.

see the full workflow here.