On the management of containers

A fast, compose‑first
Docker TUI,
written in Rust.

A modern alternative to lazydocker, for developers who live in the terminal and prefer their container orchestration swift, silent, and served in ASCII. Keyboard‑driven, vim‑flavoured, and entirely free of mouse tax.

$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kennywillbe/rustydocker/master/install.sh | bash

Read the source → Download binary ↓

Figure I. The interface, at rest.

rustydocker · project: my-app 0.2.1

 CONTAINERS ──────────  │ Logs · Stats · Info · Env · Top · Graph
  ▸ api        up 2h    │
  ▸ postgres   up 2h    │ [api] 08:24:11  listening on :8080
  ▸ worker     up 3m  * │ [api] 08:24:12  connected to postgres
  ▫ redis      exited   │ [api] 08:24:13  GET  /health     200   1ms
                        │ [api] 08:24:14  GET  /users      200  12ms
 IMAGES ──────────────  │ [api] 08:24:15  POST /login      401   3ms
  node:20      128 MB   │ [api] 08:24:16  GET  /orders/42  200   8ms
  postgres:16  387 MB   │ [db ] 08:24:17  duration: 0.312 ms
  redis:7       31 MB   │
                        │ CPU ▁▂▄█▆▃▂▁▂▃▅▇█▆▃▁▂▄▆▇   42.1%
 VOLUMES ─────────────  │ MEM ▁▁▂▃▄▄▄▅▅▅▆▆▆▆▆▇▇▇▇▇   68.3%  !
  pgdata       2.4 GB   │ NET ▂▃▂▄▃▅▆▄▃▂▃▄▅▆▇▅▄▃▂▂   128 KB/s  ↑
  node_mods    812 MB   │
                        │
 NETWORKS ────────────  │
  bridge       bridge   │
  my-app_net   bridge   │
                        │
 j/k nav    tab switch    / search    r restart    s stop    ? help    q quit

Four stacked sidebar sections — containers, images, volumes, networks — paired with tabbed detail views. Every column of information is reachable without lifting your hands from home row.

§ I · Features

Built for control,
tuned for speed.

A deliberate set of tools for people who ship containers for a living. No dashboards, no telemetry, no cloud — just a tight loop between you and the Docker socket.

Compose-first

Services are grouped by Docker Compose project, with a live dependency graph visualising depends_on relationships — unique to rustydocker.

Real-time logs

Streaming logs with regular‑expression search (/), per‑match highlighting, and an all‑logs view with colour‑coded container names.

Live statistics

CPU, memory, and network‑delta charts in KB/s, rendered directly into the terminal with tiny sparkline histories.

Fuzzy find & pin

Score‑based fuzzy matching across the sidebar. Bookmark favourites to the top with *, multi‑select with Space.

Event‑driven

The UI subscribes to the Docker event stream — container births, deaths, and image pulls refresh the interface instantly, without polling.

Hooks & commands

Attach shell hooks to Docker events, register custom commands in config.toml, and trigger bulk actions across any selection.

§ II · Installation

Three paths
to the prompt.

I.
Quick install

The curl‑to‑bash ritual. Fetches the latest release binary and drops it in ~/.local/bin.
```
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kennywillbe/rustydocker/master/install.sh | bash
```
II.
From source

For the patient and the paranoid. Requires Rust 1.75 or newer.
```
cargo install --path .
```
III.
Arch Linux

Available in the AUR, for those who run Arch — btw.
```
yay -S rustydocker
```

§ III · Keybindings

Every action,
one keystroke away.

Navigation

jk: Move cursor up / down
hl: Focus sidebar / main
Tab: Next detail tab
1–6: Jump to tab
/: Regex search in logs
?: Help overlay
q: Quit

Container actions

u: Start
s: Stop
r: Restart
p: Pause / unpause
e: Exec into shell
a: Attach
w: Open port in browser
d: Remove (with confirm)

Compose & bulk

U: compose up -d
D: compose down
R: compose restart
Space: Multi-select
*: Pin to top
b: Bulk commands menu
x: Disk cleanup menu
S: Export logs to file

§ IV · Configuration

Drop a TOML file.
Tune it to taste.

Location.

~/.config/rustydocker/config.toml

Every value has a sensible default — the file is optional. Use it to tune timing, alert thresholds, remote Docker hosts, custom commands, and event hooks that run arbitrary shell whenever a container starts, stops, or dies.

tick_rate_ms: UI refresh cadence
sidebar_width: Columns reserved for the sidebar
docker_host: Point at a remote daemon over TCP
[[hooks]]: Shell command per Docker event

# Timing
tick_rate_ms       = 250
log_tail_lines     = "100"
sidebar_width      = 40

# Resource alerts — sidebar turns red
cpu_alert_threshold    = 80.0
memory_alert_threshold = 90.0

# Optional: remote Docker daemon
# docker_host = "tcp://192.168.1.100:2376"

# Run arbitrary shell on Docker events
[[hooks]]
event   = "container_die"
command = "notify-send '{container_name} died'"

[[custom_commands]]
name    = "Tail logs in less"
command = "docker logs {container_id} 2>&1 | less"
attach  = true