Once homebrew is installed, it can be used to install Docker itself.

All the commands below are run in the terminal window. Here’s a great blog that covers the process of installing homebrew. The installation code is below – but also read up about homebrew at the link above. Homebrew is described as the ‘ missing package manager‘ for Macs – and allows installation of a wide range of open source tools.

The first step is to install the package manager homebrew on the MacBook. The following steps then explain how to make QGIS work in this way – the principles can be used by other GUI-based software also. Various advice exists for achieving this. But QGIS is a graphical tool, and so a key challenge is to direct the display output from the programme running in the docker container to the screen of the parent computer/laptop. With a Docker image available on the Docker hub, this is clearly a good way to address this. With an Apple MacBook however, this installation has been found to sometimes corrupt other software installed, and also to become corrupted by other software. There is an installer on the QGIS website to allow installation of the software into the core operating system. QGIS is able to create, edit, visualise, analyse and publish geospatial information. An example of such an application is the Free and Open Source Geographical Information System (GIS) tool QGIS. However, some applications have a graphical user interface (GUI) for users to interact with. databases and web servers), or command line (e.g. Most of the time, such applications are server based (e.g. This can prevent applications cross-corrupting each other, and also permit developed applications to be easily shared. Docker is a great utility tool that allows ‘containerisation’ of a very wide range of applications, where the containers are used to build images that can be shared, running applications in a way that seals them off from the rest of your computer. Previous blogs on this site have highlighted the strengths and advantages of Docker.

Brew install socat