Docker Experimental Features

This page contains a list of features in the Docker engine which are experimental. Experimental features are not ready for production. They are provided for test and evaluation in your sandbox environments.

The information below describes each feature and the GitHub pull requests and issues associated with it. If necessary, links are provided to additional documentation on an issue. As an active Docker user and community member, please feel free to provide any feedback on these features you wish.

Install Docker experimental

Unlike the regular Docker binary, the experimental channels is built and updated nightly on https://experimental.docker.com. From one day to the next, new features may appear, while existing experimental features may be refined or entirely removed.

1. Verify that you have curl installed.

    $ which curl
   

   If curl isn't installed, install it after updating your manager:

    $ sudo apt-get update
    $ sudo apt-get install curl
   

2. Get the latest Docker package.

    $ curl -sSL https://experimental.docker.com/ | sh
   

   The system prompts you for your sudo password. Then, it downloads and installs Docker and its dependencies.

   Note: If your company is behind a filtering proxy, you may find that the apt-key command fails for the Docker repo during installation. To work around this, add the key directly using the following:

     $ curl -sSL https://experimental.docker.com/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
   

3. Verify docker is installed correctly.

    $ sudo docker run hello-world
   

   This command downloads a test image and runs it in a container.

Get the Linux binary

To download the latest experimental docker binary for Linux, use the following URLs:

https://experimental.docker.com/builds/Linux/i386/docker-latest

https://experimental.docker.com/builds/Linux/x86_64/docker-latest

After downloading the appropriate binary, you can follow the instructions here to run the docker daemon.

Note

1. You can get the MD5 and SHA256 hashes by appending .md5 and .sha256 to the URLs respectively

2. You can get the compressed binaries by appending .tgz to the URLs

Build an experimental binary

You can also build the experimental binary from the standard development environment by adding DOCKER_EXPERIMENTAL=1 to the environment where you run make to build Docker binaries. For example, to build a Docker binary with the experimental features enabled:

    $ DOCKER_EXPERIMENTAL=1 make binary

Current experimental features

• External graphdriver plugins
• The user namespaces feature has graduated from experimental.

How to comment on an experimental feature

Each feature's documentation includes a list of proposal pull requests or PRs associated with the feature. If you want to comment on or suggest a change to a feature, please add it to the existing feature PR.

Issues or problems with a feature? Inquire for help on the #docker IRC channel or in on the Docker Google group.