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Docker Desktop currently has the MCP Toolkit, which is really convenient for creating MCP servers locally. However, I would like to manage MCP servers running on a Linux server using MCP Toolkit. It doesn’t seem like Docker Engine supports MCP Toolkit, only Docker Desktop does.
Are there any plans to make managing MCP servers easier with Docker Engine on a headless Linux server?
MCP Toolkit is a Docker Desktop extension. Since none of the other Docker Desktop extensions exist for docker-ce, I doubt MCP toolkit will make an exception.
The docker engine does not support extensions.
The MCP Toolkit is a Docker Desktop feature indeed, but the docker-mcp plugin behind the toolkit is available without Docker Desktop
Although the repository is called “mcp-gateway”, the README mentions that it contains the code of the mcp cli.
You can find the instructions to install it, but it looks like the instructions were not updated after renaming some folders. So here is what worked for me on ubuntu 24.04:
snap install go --classic
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/docker/mcp-gateway.git
cd mcp-gateway
mkdir -p "$HOME/.docker/cli-plugins/"
# Build and install the plugin
make docker-mcp
docker mcp --help
Does it help?
Thanks @rimelek - fixing that bug in the README.md now
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