Run docker-compose with podman as a backend on MacOS

Question

I am trying to run docker-compose CLI with podman backend on my local machine (MacOS). Here is what I did:

1. Install podman using brew: brew install podman
2. Initialize the podman machine: podman machine init
3. Started the machine: podman machine start

Running podman version gives me this:

Client:
Version:      3.4.4
API Version:  3.4.4
Go Version:   go1.17.6
Built:        Wed Dec  8 19:41:11 2021
OS/Arch:      darwin/amd64

Server:
Version:      3.4.4
API Version:  3.4.4
Go Version:   go1.16.8
Built:        Wed Dec  8 22:45:07 2021
OS/Arch:      linux/amd64

I created a symlink for podman (ln -s podman docker), so running docker version gives me the same and I can actually run containers using docker run even though docker is not installed.

Afterwards I installed docker-compose using:

sudo curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.29.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose      

docker-compose version gives me this:

docker-compose version 1.29.2, build 5becea4c
docker-py version: 5.0.0
CPython version: 3.9.0
OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.1.1h  22 Sep 2020

Problem is that docker-compose up test is not working as docker-compose doesn't seem to find the docker host to connect to or is somehow blocked, does somebody know how to solve this issue:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 670, in urlopen
  File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 392, in _make_request
  File "http/client.py", line 1255, in request
  File "http/client.py", line 1301, in _send_request
  File "http/client.py", line 1250, in endheaders
  File "http/client.py", line 1010, in _send_output
  File "http/client.py", line 950, in send
  File "docker/transport/unixconn.py", line 43, in connect
ConnectionRefusedError: [Errno 61] Connection refused

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "requests/adapters.py", line 439, in send
  File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 726, in urlopen
  File "urllib3/util/retry.py", line 410, in increment
  File "urllib3/packages/six.py", line 734, in reraise
  File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 670, in urlopen
  File "urllib3/connectionpool.py", line 392, in _make_request
  File "http/client.py", line 1255, in request
  File "http/client.py", line 1301, in _send_request
  File "http/client.py", line 1250, in endheaders
  File "http/client.py", line 1010, in _send_output
  File "http/client.py", line 950, in send
  File "docker/transport/unixconn.py", line 43, in connect
urllib3.exceptions.ProtocolError: ('Connection aborted.', ConnectionRefusedError(61, 'Connection refused'))

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "docker/api/client.py", line 214, in _retrieve_server_version
  File "docker/api/daemon.py", line 181, in version
  File "docker/utils/decorators.py", line 46, in inner
  File "docker/api/client.py", line 237, in _get
  File "requests/sessions.py", line 543, in get
  File "requests/sessions.py", line 530, in request
  File "requests/sessions.py", line 643, in send
  File "requests/adapters.py", line 498, in send
requests.exceptions.ConnectionError: ('Connection aborted.', ConnectionRefusedError(61, 'Connection refused'))

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "docker-compose", line 3, in <module>
  File "compose/cli/main.py", line 81, in main
  File "compose/cli/main.py", line 200, in perform_command
  File "compose/cli/command.py", line 60, in project_from_options
  File "compose/cli/command.py", line 152, in get_project
  File "compose/cli/docker_client.py", line 41, in get_client
  File "compose/cli/docker_client.py", line 170, in docker_client
  File "docker/api/client.py", line 197, in __init__
  File "docker/api/client.py", line 221, in _retrieve_server_version
docker.errors.DockerException: Error while fetching server API version: ('Connection aborted.', ConnectionRefusedError(61, 'Connection refused'))
[63757] Failed to execute script docker-compose

Answer 1

Did you install podman-mac-helper?

sudo /opt/homebrew/Cellar/podman/4.0.2/bin/podman-mac-helper install

docker-compose v2.3.4 works just fine with Podman v4.0.2 on a MacBook Pro M1 running macOS Monterey as long as you install podman-mac-helper (which makes /var/run/docker.sock available.)