Is Kitematic End of Life?

[jackfruhecolab]

As a fairly new user to the Docker Ecosystem, kitematic is really, really confusing.

Not the app, but how Docker is positioning it.

A fresh clean install of Docker for windows (and I assume mac) provides a menu item for kitematic.

If kitematic is depreciated, can this menu item be removed? It wasted an evening of productivity for me, and I'm sure countless others.

There is a ton of dis-information about Kitematic out there:

• The kitematic.com page advises "kitematic is now part of docker toolbox" and advises us to "Download Docker toolbox" Clicking that link takes us to docs.docker.com/toolbox which tells us toolbox is depreciated, and to use docker for windows

Installing Docker for windows does not include kitematic, but it is on the menu. Clicking the link on the menu brings up a download for a zip file with no instructions. There isn't so much as a readme in the zip file telling us what to do with it.

No where in the documentation is GitHub.com/docker/kitematic mentioned as a source for future updates.

The install instructions on GitHub.com/docker/kitematic don't say how to install for windows.

Who can clean all this mess up?

If you want to kill kitematic, fine, if you want to keep it, fine, but it would take less time to fix the various bad sources of information on your own website than it took me to write this post.

[izuio]

The whole Kitematic thing is extremely irritating - I looked at it 6 months ago and again in the last few days.

My request to Docker(who appear to own it and include it in the docker desktop menu) is to take a policy stand and either support Kitematic properly or declare it end of life.

Docker Desktop takes you to a Kitematic version which is broken: It rediscovers a 4 year old bug which just keeps coming back where it hangs if you try to search for an image...

The documentation says:

Every container created through Kitematic automatically has it’s volumes exposed on your Mac; this is not true of most of the images I have created and is contradicted here 3 years ago here: https://forums.docker.com/t/modifying-or-adding-volumes/1287/4 ...with no update other than complaint about no updates !

the same issue generated some discussions on reddit. .. https://www.reddit.com/r/docker/comments/82ws1c/kitematic_how_to_add_volumes_to_containers/

so it's off to portainer.io for now.

[goowikns]

For those coming here, and have their correct shared drives set up in the container, and still get stuck at updating.

My problem was that I forgot to enable the C drive in docker:

Had a little brainfart at that moment. So if it helps anyone else with brainfarts, glad to help :)

[jdogan-castle]

I'm a bit late to the party, and I agree that the misinformation is problematic... I just encountered the same issue today and came across your post. When you right-click on Docker Desktop in the system tray and click on the Kitematic entry, it brings up a dialog prompting you to download Kitematic. Unfortunately it seems that this download button is pointing to an outdated version. To get around it, I was able to just go to https://github.com/docker/kitematic/releases and click on the zip file for the latest release (currently v0.17.8). When I put the contents from that zip file in C:\Program Files\Docker\Kitematic, then the Kitematic entry in the Docker Desktop context menu started working for me again. Just wanted to share since I agree that it is frustrating.

[bryan-lunt]

Well, since it basically doesn't work at all on macOS, it's pretty much End-of-Life as far as mac users are concerned.