Ability to download old releases

[mfornasa]

I am aware of #444, but that issue has been closed without explanation.

It should be possible to download older versions. For example, version 1.13.0-rc5 has a high priority bug (moby/moby#29950) that breaks all our caching. rc5 has been auto installed, and I am unable to find the package to revert to rc4 while waiting for a new stable release with the fix.

Please advise.

[justincormack]

@mfornasa 1.13.0-rc5 is a beta channel release, so unfortunately there may be breakages. There will be a new beta release this week. If you want a stable release, we recommend installing from the stable channel.

[mfornasa]

I accept the possibility of a breakage on beta, no issues with that.

I would like to be able to manually download an older package. This would also help in debugging issues with the beta and provide you better feedback.

[mfornasa]

@justincormack I have been able to find the link for version rc4 using the forum: https://download.docker.com/mac/beta/1.13.0.14840/Docker.dmg. I still believe that it would be useful to have a list of those links somewhere.

[cloakedcode]

There are two ways to downgrade:

1. Recreate the URL

If you happen to know the build number (e.g. 14937) -- not the git commit you see when running docker --version or docker version -- you can form the URL:

https://download.docker.com/mac/{{ beta | stable}}/{{ version }}.{{ build number }}/Docker.dmg
# example:
https://download.docker.com/mac/stable/1.12.6.14937/Docker.dmg

(Note: the build number shows up in "About Docker" from the menulet menu.)

Of course, you'd need to know the build number, which is hard to do if you've already upgraded.

2. Pull it from Trash

After upgrading, the old Docker.app gets put in the Trash (e.g. Docker (14937)). Uninstall the current version, Preferences... -> Uninstall / Reset -> Uninstall; delete /Applications/Docker; copy the old version from the Trash into /Applications; rename to Docker; and launch Docker to begin the install process.

[hyperknot]

@cloakedcode's link for 1.12.6 is the only code on the internet for a reliable 1.12 version.

This is a joke. Pushing an unstable, buggy version and then just not caring about keeping an archive download list.

1.12.6 is actually totally missing from the Release Notes, so no way to figure out the build number ourselves.

[friism]

@hyperknot there was never a stable release that included Docker Engine 1.12.6. 1.12.6 and 1.13.0 were released almost at the same time so Docker for Mac stable went straight to 1.13.0.

Are you experiencing stability problems with Docker 1.13?

[mrhanlon]

@friism I'll speak for myself at least, but I found 1.13 to be unusable on my corporate network. It would not play nice at all with VPN/Proxy/DNS, where the 1.12.x releases were fine.

I will say that this is somewhat beside the point here. I don't think that it is unexpected that at least someone is going to have a problem with an update release affecting their workflow. But when that does happen, the most common thing to do is go download the last known working version. But since Docker for Mac doesn't list any archived releases that is impossible, unless you magic the URL out of the Github issues.

[mfornasa]

To be clear: I am not suggesting an automatic downgrade mechanism, or nothing fancy. A simple list of download links for previous version would be really valuable. The lack of it has been a nuisance for me and my company twice in the last couple of months.

[hyperknot]

@mrhanlon https://download.docker.com/mac/stable/1.12.6.14937/Docker.dmg is a stable release with 1.12.6 and works reliably.

Yes, 1.13.0 is full of bugs, I simply could delete exited containers on it and so on. It was like that with 1.12.(0,1,2) and I believe it'll be like this in the future. Thus I'd prefer to always stay on older releases with Docker.

[friism]

@mrhanlon @hyperknot if you haven't already, can you run diagnostics when this is failing and open a separate issue so that we can fix the problem?

We're continuously fixing bugs (including security-related problems), and those fixes are released in new versions of Docker for Mac. We don't support or patch older versions - we only support the latest version on the stable and beta channels respectively.

Because we want users to be running software that's patched and secure, we don't publicly document how to download and install old versions.

If you find bugs in Docker for Mac and Windows (either stable or beta), please run the in-app diagnostics and open an issue so that we can address the problem.

[mrhanlon]

@friism Thanks. There are/were several tickets already open related to the DNS/Proxy issues I was experiencing. But the fact remained that I was pretty much 100% blocked by this problem and needed a way to roll back pronto.

[jelder]

@friism There will always be reported, unfixed bugs. If you don't want to "support" old versions that's fine. I know you have limited resources.

However, it is inconsistent to allow users to selectively turn off automatic updates while not allowing downloads of previous versions.

Would it be so bad if you just enabled public S3:ListBucket on download.docker.com?

[phbcanada]

@mrhanlon - I was able to work around the network bug (on Mac) by quitting Docker - move the old version from Trash to Applications and then run the old version. Probably only a temporary fix but I was able to get my images updated. I was lucky to still have the old version there.

[Spencatro]

It's totally wild that this issue is still unresolved. Boy howdy for once am I glad I never de-clutter my downloads folder.

[if-kyle]

+1 as someone who helps maintain d4m-nfs, it makes it very hard to know when users upgrade, to know if its a breakage in our code or something that has changed in docker for mac.

[FranklinYu]

@cloakedcode's URL trick no longer works with latest version scheme starting with 17: https://download.docker.com/mac/edge/17.05.0.17656/Docker.dmg doesn't work. The Trash trick saved me.

[zbruhnke]

in case this helps anyone else I put an older version of the docker edge beta in an S3 bucket here since i had one in trash

This one in particular is reflected in the filename

17.05.0-ce-rc1-mac8-build16582

If it helps you're welcome to it - I'll leave this up for a while

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/docker-edge/Docker-edge-17.05.0-ce-rc1-mac8-build16582-git-sha-73d01bb48e.dmg

[jsok]

I've opened docker/docs#5044 which begins the initiative of adding the download links to their respective release notes.

[blasterpal]

#latetotheparty I wanted to downgrade to an earlier version to address slow volume mounts that suddenly started. So I stumbled onto another method to obtain URLs for older Docker for Mac downloads: Use Homebrew repo to lookup the builds and download.
For example: Homebrew/homebrew-cask@68eaa03#diff-a0d0875b383dcea25030e97ef8b38e31

Homebrew is widely maintained project and I'd suspect this is fairly reliable means.

[FranklinYu]

@iolloyd I'm pretty pessimistic about what the team would do. Clearly @friism is not reading anything we wrote here. This issue will end up being a discussion thread about how the community (especially @jsok) hack it out.

[friism]

Thanks for all your feedback on whether to make old Docker for Mac and Windows download links available.

We're taken your criticism to heart. Acknowledging that new stable builds occasionally break users we'll include links to old installers in the release notes. We've merged @jsok's PR and will also include download links in release notes for future releases.

I'll close this issue - please let us know if this doesn't resolve the problem.

[iolloyd]

@friism much appreciated, thank you.

[FranklinYu]

It would be much appreciated if old releases of Edge channel are also provided. This is actually good to Docker, since it encourage us to use Edge and report bugs. (They are provided.)

[hyperknot]

@jsok really nice work! But how did you get the matching full name (17.09.0-ce-mac35) <> build number? By hand? The Github script you have doesn't seem to have this automatically and I've also been struggling to find a source for matching build numbers to full names.
My best ideas so far had been homebrew repo and Chocolately index:
https://chocolatey.org/packages/docker-for-windows

[FranklinYu]

@hyperknot The HTTP response header has x-amz-meta-version: 17.09.0-ce-mac34 (19605).

[hyperknot]

@FranklinYu those were added only recently, for example 17.03 (https://download.docker.com/win/stable/10743/Docker%20for%20Windows%20Installer.exe) didn't have them.

[FranklinYu]

@hyperknot Oh you are talking about Windows? Hmm that's way more difficult... Looks like Windows guy didn't put any meta header on S3.

[hyperknot]

@FranklinYu both. The S3 headers started appearing at 17.06 and were not present before 17.03:
https://download.docker.com/mac/stable/15583/Docker.dmg

[FranklinYu]

Then it makes sense; that's why @jsok only got versions starting from 17.06.

[hyperknot]

But the PR to add Download links to Release Notes actually contained them all. I guess it must have been manual work then.
https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/release-notes

[yuliyanm]

Yesterday I updated to 17.12.0-ce-mac46 (21698) and now I can not push and pull from privete usecure registries any more, and I have two deadline pressing on my neck. Why does Docker not provide an offcial way to downgrade!!!!!!!!!

[hyperknot]

@yuliyanm they do, just download from https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/release-notes/#stable-release-notes

[gcstang]

@yuliyanm
This is the 17.11.0-ce-mac40 (20561) version.
https://download.docker.com/mac/edge/20561/Docker.dmg

[ivnnv]

Hi,
There still no way to find the build number for edge releases and so, downgrade it to a given version.
This last 18.02.0-ce-mac53 release totally broke my environment, but 18.02.0-ce-rc1-mac50 worked like charm! Why dont you provide download links for edge releases???
We would need at least a way to identify the build number so we can build the download link as:
https://download.docker.com/mac/edge/BUILDNUMBER/Docker.dmg

[akimd]

I don't understand well all the messages here. As @hyperknot already reported, you can still download the previous releases from the release pages:

• https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/release-notes/
• https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-mac/edge-release-notes/
• https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/release-notes/
• https://docs.docker.com/docker-for-windows/edge-release-notes/

[docker-robott]

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