Feature Request: Add apple/container support

[rahatsagor]

I was excited to try the new Cloudflare Container Service announced today. However, the current workflow seems to be tightly coupled with Docker for building and pushing container images (e.g., using docker build and docker push).

As a developer on an Apple Silicon Mac, I have standardized my workflow on apple/container, the native containerization tool provided by Apple, and I do not have Docker installed. This prevents me from being able to use the new container service without installing and running Docker, which introduces an extra dependency and deviates from my preferred native toolchain.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like to request that the Cloudflare Container Service, and its associated tooling/CLI (wrangler), add support for apple/container as an alternative to Docker for image management.

This would ideally mean that commands for building and pushing images could detect and use apple/container if it's available on the system, providing a seamless experience for developers on modern macOS.

Describe alternatives you've considered

The only alternative at the moment is to install Docker Desktop on my Mac. While this is a viable workaround, it's not ideal because:

It forces the installation of a significant piece of software that I otherwise do not need.

It goes against the trend of using the native, more efficient virtualization and containerization tools provided by the OS.

apple/container is positioned to be the standard for container development on Apple platforms, and supporting it would make Cloudflare's services more forward-compatible.

Additional context

With the growing adoption of Apple Silicon, many developers are moving towards native tooling like apple/container. Supporting it would lower the barrier to entry for this significant and growing segment of the developer community and enhance the overall developer experience on macOS.

Thank you for considering this request!

[mikenomitch]

Hi - We think this is generally a good idea. We don't want to be as heavily coupled to Docker, but picked that as the first local-dev target as its the most widely used and has a single API across OSes (for the most part). Getting podman and/or other Docker-CLI compatible tools to work is probably our next step, as they might just require a few small tweaks to the commands.

We'll likely support apple/container as the go-to on Apple machines once its a bit more highly adopted. Haven't put a plan in place to do this yet though.

Going to keep this open but it's probably more long-term.

Workers-sdk is open source if anybody wants to take a crack at this! If so, please reach out and we can talk thru the API.

[emily-shen]

fwiw, colima should work as a docker desktop alternative - you just need to set the env var WRANGLER_DOCKER_HOST to your colima socket.