12 open-source tools that make Docker better

From bringing GUIs to Docker tools to using Docker to streamline development and testing, these 12 projects help float Docker’s boat

Blink and you might miss some of the most interesting developments around Docker these days. Kubernetes may be getting more of the hot-new-tool thunder, but Docker continues to offer “just enough” container orchestration for most development projects and deployments.

Plus Docker has its own rich ecosystem of third-party tools that extend Docker, jazz it up, or make it less persnickety. Here are 12 open-source creations that get a boost from Docker or give Docker a boost, leveraging Docker for specific use cases or making Docker easier to work with.


Docker images are like sandwiches, with many layers. Maybe it is better to say they’re like sandwiches in opaque wrappers: You don’t always know how many layers there are, or what’s in them. Dive lets you visually explore the layers in a Docker image through an interactive UI. You can see what ingredients are present in each layer, and also determine how each layer has changed the layer below it (what has been added or removed). You can also analyze an image for wasted or duplicated space, and even pass the results along to your continuous integration pipeline, so that an image with too much wasted space fails the build process.

Docker Compose UI

Docker Compose UI is an MIT-licensed project that provides Docker Compose with a web-based UI, which is built using Python’s Flask framework. Containers can be run locally or on a remote host, and Docker Compose UI itself is available in a Docker container for convenience. Note that some of the demo projects provided with Docker Compose UI can’t scale “because of published ports conflicts.”

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