[Feature Request]: `docker-machine` is deprecated, we need to add support for another tool for autoscaling

[gromain]

docker-machine is being deprecated and starts to be unavailable from repositories. It's also not compatible with the latest docker version. See docker-archive-public/docker.machine#4537 and docker/roadmap#245 .

One alternative would be to move towards Terraform. There is a provider for Scaleway, so we wouldn't lose functionality. Is there any interest in moving towards this solution?

What is the problem?

docker-machine being deprecated.

What should be the expected behavior?

Not losing the autoscale!

How can we reproduce this? (What steps did you do to trigger the problem? If applicable, please include multiple screenshots of the problem! Be detailed)

Try installing docker-machine on a recent OS.

[gromain]

A python alternative could be libcloud (I know this tool is written in JS, just mentioning this for posterity): https://libcloud.apache.org/

[pierotofy]

Definitely interested in possible approaches to migrate away from docker-machine, although docker-machine is open source, so it continues to receive support from various organizations (e.g. gitlab https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ci-cd/docker-machine) and has been working OK thus far, so I don't think we're losing autoscaling anytime soon.

[gromain]

Ah yes, this is good then!
Maybe we can just update the Readme to point to this new repo, instead of towards https://docs.docker.com/machine/install-machine/ . It was really confusing for me!

[gromain]

I've fixed the documentation, Dockerfile and docker-compose files.
This will do for now, but I suggest we keep this open to make sure the tool is not completely abandoned by Gitlab and we keep looking for another solution.

[pierotofy]

Thanks. As a heads up, I've reverted the docker-compose file changes since not everyone uses the autoscaling functionality (perhaps those changes should be part of a separate docker-compose file).

[gromain]

Oh I see, I thought the docker-composer file here was only for the autoscaler (since this was in the autoscaler section of the readme too and there is specific instructions about starting it up with one child nodeodm).
I'll create a separate one and update the readme accordingly.

[theoway]

A python alternative could be libcloud (I know this tool is written in JS, just mentioning this for posterity): https://libcloud.apache.org/

@pierotofy Can we not migrate to Terraform? It is very widely supported.

[ArthurD3nt]

GitLab announced that they too will deprecate docker-machine in October 2027 by issuing this deprecation notice.

There is still time to find an alternative and migrate to that. I will look into it and update my comment with the proposals if you guys are interested.

[smathermather]

There is still time to find an alternative and migrate to that. I will look into it and update my comment with the proposals if you guys are interested.

It would be great to have a summary of alternatives. Thanks for looking into this.

[ArthurD3nt]

Hello everyone,
I haven’t looked at the details of the migration to these tools yet but I made a list of plausible alternatives.

The literature

I did some reading of the issue that announces the start of “”maintenance mode”” for docker-machine.
First of all they state that maintenance mode means that they will still do bug fixes but not implement new features. This is clearly false and misleading as it’s clear from the amount and the nature of the issues open that it is clearly abandoned in favor of their closed source enterprise products.

One of the maintainers states that the alternatives should be:

• Windows: Docker desktop
• MacOS: Docker desktop
• Linux: InfraKit

InfraKit, as stated by this gentleman here, is a tool for system builders. It is very complex and way less usable than docker-machine. Also, as it’s in their “”maintenance mode”” as well, I don’t really see the point in switching from one deprecated library to another.

TLDR:Docker as a company wanted to sell more enterprise solutions and these open source ones were menacing their business model so they pulled the plug.

Gitlab out of necessity continued to update his fork of docker-machine used internally for their CI/CD pipeline but they too are migrating away from it.

The alternatives

I guessed we would want to keep support for these could providers:

• DigitalOcean
• Hetzner
• Scaleway
• Amazon Web Services

Provisioning tool	DigitalOcean	Hetzner	Scaleway	AWS
Terraform	✅	✅	✅	✅
Libcloud	✅	❌	✅	✅
OpenTofu	✅	✅	✅	✅

Terraform has the benefit of being the most widely used and basically a industry standard.
On top of terraform I would suggest cloud-init for bootstrapping