About

GitHub Action to set up (download and install) Docker CE. Works on Linux, macOS and Windows.

Note

This action is useful if you want to pin against a specific Docker version or set up a custom daemon configuration or if Docker is not available on your runner. If you're using GitHub-hosted runners on Linux or Windows, Docker is already up and running, so it might not be necessary to use this action.

Warning

Does not work on macOS runners with ARM architecture (no nested virtualization):

• https://github.com/crazy-max/ghaction-setup-docker/pull/53
• https://github.com/docker/actions-toolkit/issues/317

---

• Usage
  • Quick start
  • Daemon configuration
  • Define custom limactl start arguments (macOS)
• Customizing
  • inputs
  • outputs
• Contributing
• License

Usage

Quick start

name: ci

on:
  push:

jobs:
  docker:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      -
        name: Set up Docker
        uses: docker/setup-docker-action@v4

Daemon configuration

You can configure the Docker daemon using the daemon-config input. In the following example, we configure the Docker daemon to enable debug and the containerd image store feature:

name: ci

on:
  push:

jobs:
  docker:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      -
        name: Set up Docker
        uses: docker/setup-docker-action@v4
        with:
          daemon-config: |
            {
              "debug": true,
              "features": {
                "containerd-snapshotter": true
              }
            }

Define custom limactl start arguments (macOS)

You can define custom limactl start arguments using the LIMA_START_ARGS environment variable to customize the VM:

name: ci

on:
  push:

jobs:
  docker:
    runs-on: macos-latest
    steps:
      -
        name: Set up Docker
        uses: docker/setup-docker-action@v4
        env:
          LIMA_START_ARGS: --cpus 4 --memory 8

Customizing

inputs

The following inputs can be used as step.with keys

Name	Type	Default	Description
version	String	latest	Docker CE version (e.g., v24.0.6).
channel	String	stable	Docker CE channel (e.g, stable, edge or test).
daemon-config	String		Docker daemon JSON configuration
tcp-port	Number		TCP port to expose the Docker API locally
context	String	setup-docker-action	Docker context name.
set-host	Bool	false	Set DOCKER_HOST environment variable to docker socket path.
rootless	Bool	false	Start daemon in rootless mode

outputs

The following outputs are available

Name	Type	Description
sock	String	Docker socket path
tcp	String	Docker TCP address if tcp-port is set

Contributing

Want to contribute? Awesome! You can find information about contributing to this project in the CONTRIBUTING.md

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE for more details.