Dockercraft Lets You Manage Containers In Pixelized Blocks

Among software geeks, Docker has become quite the buzzword. In essence, it's a tool that lets software developers package up their apps for testing on their personal computer and then deploy it to the actual production machine without having to worry about the difference between the two machines. Among the other type of geeks, the gaming types, Minecraft has been and is still the hype, allowing people to create anything, even reimplemented basic computers from scratch. So what better way to combine the best of both worlds than with a Docker Minecraft implementation.

Of course, it will be called "Dockercraft" as many other Minecraft-inspired spinoffs are called. The software within a software isn't exactly a complicated Docker manager implemented in Minecraft. Instead it's a rather simple but fancy way to visualize and flip a few swtiches on a Docker container. It isn't a fork of Minecraft either. At least the client side of Minecraft remains the same.

All the "magic", if you could call it that, happens in a custom Minecraft server called "cuberite" that accepts plugins in the Lua programming language. And so some Microsoft programmers built their own plugin to connect to Docker containers.

Microsoft initially made Dockercraft to show it off at the annual Dockercon meetup. But it has just released it as open source software on Github so that other might also enjoy, or maybe even improve, the experience. Not that it's exactly enjoyable. Or particularly useful for that matter. Going our in a 3D world is hardly the best way to manage Docker containers anyway. Still, it might be fun for a while. And who knows? Given how many bright and sometimes insane minds have come up with amazing things on Minecraft, we might see something similar done for Docker in the future as well.

VIA: Business Insider