Stevedore

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Bundled components
• Supported OSes
• Installation
  • Manual
  • Chocolatey
  • WinGet
  • Advanced: Command-line install options
• Usage
  • Docker Compose
  • Configuration and data files
  • BuildKit
  • nerdctl
• Building from source
• Where Linux containers support is gone?

Overview

This project aims to provide a frictionless Docker experience for Windows Containers.

Stevedore can be used as a replacement for Docker Desktop, DockerMsftProvider or Mirantis Container Runtime.

Only Windows Containers are supported.

Bundled components

• Docker Engine

• Docker Compose

• Docker Buildx

• docker-credential-wincred

• containerd

• nerdctl

• CNI plugins

Supported OSes

• Windows 10 starting with version 1809 (build 17763)

• Windows 11

• Windows Server 2019, 2022, 2025

Installation

Manual

1. Download MSI installer

2. Double-click on it

3. Next-next-next

4. Reboot your computer. This is needed to finish installation of Windows Containers feature and to add your user to docker-users group so user can access Docker service.

Chocolatey

Stevedore is available via Chocolatey package manager. If you already have Chocolatey installed, you can just run the following command from elevated console:

choco install stevedore

Then reboot.

WinGet

winget install stevedore

Then reboot.

Advanced: Command-line install options

Stevedore installer supports several command-line options that may be handy to configure unattended installations.

Basic usage: msiexec /i c:\path\to\stevedore.msi.

For quiet (non-interactive) installation add /quiet option.

If you only want to install specific Stevedore features, use ADDLOCAL=Feature1,Feature2,Feature3 syntax.

List of available MSI features for ADDLOCAL

• FeatureHyperV installs Hyper-V support. It allows running containers with Hyper-V isolation.

• FeatureWincred installs docker-credential-wincred.

You can also pass custom installation properties to Stevedore installer using PROPERTY=value syntax.

List of available MSI properties

• INSTALLDIR=%ProgramFiles%\Stevedore specifies directory where Stevedore executable files will be installed

• SERVICENAME=stevedore specifies Windows service name

When installing Stevedore via Chocolatey, use this syntax: choco install stevedore --install-arguments="ADDLOCAL=Feature1,Feature2,Feature3 PROPERTY=value /quiet"

Usage

After installation and reboot, docker command should be available on PATH and ready to use.

You may try docker run --rm hello-world from a command line to confirm that everything was set up properly.

In order to communicate with Docker engine, users needs to be in docker-users group. Upon installation, Stevedore automatically adds installing user to docker-users. If you need other users to also access Docker engine, you will need to add them manually. You can use Add-LocalGroupMember PowerShell commandlet for that.

Docker Compose

Stevedore installs two flavors of Docker Compose.

You can use Docker Compose V2 via docker compose command.

You can also use Docker Compose V1 compatibility mode via docker-compose command.

Configuration and data files

Stevedore stores configuration and runtime data files for Windows containers under %ProgramData%\Docker directory.

BuildKit

Stevedore has experimental support for BuildKit.

After Stevedore installation (and reboot), create BuildKit builder:

docker buildx create --name buildkit-builder --driver=remote npipe:////./pipe/buildkitd

Verify the builder connection:

docker buildx inspect buildkit-builder

The output should indicate that the builder platform is Windows, and that the endpoint of the builder is a named pipe.

Name:          buildkit-builder
Driver:        remote
Last Activity: 2025-07-21 17:59:07 +0000 UTC

Nodes:
Name:             buildkit-builder0
Endpoint:         npipe:////./pipe/buildkitd
Status:           running
BuildKit version: v0.23.2
Platforms:        windows/amd64
...

Create a Dockerfile:

Dockerfile

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/windows/nanoserver:ltsc2022
RUN echo "Hello, world!" >> hello.txt

Build the image:

docker buildx build --builder buildkit-builder -t <tag> .

nerdctl

Stevedore has experimental support for Dockerless container environment.

After Stevedore installation (and reboot), you should be able to run containers using nerdctl:

nerdctl run --rm -it hello-world

Note	If you’re getting open \\\\.\\pipe\\containerd-containerd: Access is denied." error, you need to run commands with elevated permissions. When this feature is implemented, you will be able to use nerdctr from any user in docker-users group.

You can use nerdctl build to build containers.

Note	There’s an issue with nerdctl build. If you get error: code = Unknown desc = write /dev/stdout: The pipe is being closed., add --progress=plain option.

Additionally, ctr and buildctl are available on %PATH%.

Building from source

1. Install Rust

2. Install WiX Toolset either manually or by running choco install wixtoolset if you have Chocolatey

3. Install Visual Studio 2019 or 2022. Enable "Desktop development with C++" workload.

4. Clone Stevedore Git repository

5. Run cargo install cargo-wix to install cargo-wix

6. Run cargo wix --nocapture in repository root. Ready-to-use MSI package will be built in <repo>/target/wix directory.

Where Linux containers support is gone?

Back in summer 2021, when this project was started, there were no known alternatives to Docker Desktop. Container Desktop didn’t exist yet, and Rancher Desktop just released initial 0.1.0 release.

Today, things are very different. Rancher Desktop provides both Docker and Kubernetes support, with a very advanced UI. Stevedore is very unlikely to even come closer to Rancher Desktop functionality due to limited developer resources and lack of motivation.

Thus, starting with 0.10.0 release, Stevedore focuses on its primary goal - providing a convenient way to install Docker for Windows containers.

If you want to run Linux containers, consider one of these projects:

• Rancher Desktop (Windows + Linux + Mac)

• Container Desktop (Windows-only)

• Colima (Mac-only)