Docker has become a crucial tool in modern development, particularly for managing containerized applications. It provides a consistent environment to build, test, and deploy applications across various systems. At the heart of Docker’s functionality is its command-line interface (CLI), which provides a powerful set of commands to interact with Docker containers and images.
In this blog post, we’ll explore some essential Docker commands that every developer should know to get started with Docker.
1. docker --version
Before diving into complex commands, it’s important to check whether Docker is installed and which version you’re running. This can be easily done by running:
docker --versionThis command will return the installed version of Docker. If Docker isn’t installed, it will notify you, and you can proceed to install it.
2. docker pull
The docker pull command is used to download Docker images from Docker Hub (or another registry). When you want to run a container based on an image, you first need to pull that image. For example, to pull the official Ubuntu image, you can run:
docker pull ubuntuThis command will download the latest version of the Ubuntu image from Docker Hub to your local machine.
3. docker build
If you’re working with a Dockerfile and need to create a Docker image from it, you use the docker build command. This command processes the Dockerfile to build an image. Here’s the basic syntax:
docker build -t my-image .-tallows you to specify a tag (name) for the image..refers to the current directory where the Dockerfile is located.
Once this is complete, you can view the newly created image with docker images.
