docker/cli
Cli
Docker CLI is the command-line tool that enables users to interact with the Docker daemon for building, running, and managing containers. It provides a structured interface for controlling container lifecycles, images, networks, and volumes through a terminal-based workflow.
The tool supports building container images from source code using Dockerfiles, with features like build context streaming and image layer caching to accelerate construction. It also allows starting interactive shells inside containers for isolated development and testing environments.
The CLI operates through a client-server architecture, communicating with a remote Docker daemon over a REST API. A command-parsing pipeline tokenizes user input and dispatches it to handler functions, while a plugin-based extension system enables third-party subcommands and hooks. The daemon abstracts underlying container execution engines to manage lifecycle, isolation, and resource allocation.