runlike: the docker run command that recreates a container

See this docker container?

Set up by hand a while ago. Nobody wrote down how.

zsh

$ docker psCONTAINER ID   IMAGE               STATUS                   NAMES
9deebcc830db   nginx:1.27-alpine   Up 7 months (healthy)    shop-web

I wish I could run another one just like it…

But look at all these settings! 😱 How can I turn this into a docker run command?

zsh

$ docker inspect shop-web[    {        "Id": "9deebcc830dbd90656f94f9e2f01724878e8be1013f9c75d20c0e08c82d9b5db",        "Created": "2026-04-02T09:14:51.120384733Z",        "Path": "/docker-entrypoint.sh",        …        "HostConfig": {            "Binds": [                "shop-data:/usr/share/nginx/html",                "shop-cache:/var/cache/nginx"            ],            "ContainerIDFile": "",            "LogConfig": {                "Type": "local",                "Config": {                    "max-size": "10m"                }            },            "NetworkMode": "shop-net",            "PortBindings": {                "80/tcp": [                    {                        "HostIp": "",                        "HostPort": "8080"                    }                ]            },            "RestartPolicy": {                "Name": "unless-stopped",                "MaximumRetryCount": 0            },            "AutoRemove": false,            "VolumeDriver": "",            "VolumesFrom": null,            "ConsoleSize": [                0,                0            ],            "CapAdd": null,            "CapDrop": null,            "CgroupnsMode": "private",            "Dns": null,            "DnsOptions": [],            "DnsSearch": [],            "ExtraHosts": null,            "GroupAdd": null,            "IpcMode": "private",            "Cgroup": "",            "Links": null,            "OomScoreAdj": 0,            "PidMode": "",            "Privileged": false,            "PublishAllPorts": false,            "ReadonlyRootfs": false,            "SecurityOpt": null,            "UTSMode": "",            "UsernsMode": "",            "ShmSize": 67108864,            "Runtime": "runc",            "Isolation": "",            "CpuShares": 0,            "Memory": 268435456,            "NanoCpus": 1500000000,            "CgroupParent": "",            "BlkioWeight": 0,            "BlkioWeightDevice": [],            "BlkioDeviceReadBps": [],            "BlkioDeviceWriteBps": [],            "BlkioDeviceReadIOps": [],            "BlkioDeviceWriteIOps": [],            "CpuPeriod": 0,            "CpuQuota": 0,            "CpuRealtimePeriod": 0,            "CpuRealtimeRuntime": 0,            "CpusetCpus": "",            "CpusetMems": "",            "Devices": [],            "DeviceCgroupRules": null,            "DeviceRequests": null,            "MemoryReservation": 0,            "MemorySwap": 536870912,            "MemorySwappiness": null,            "OomKillDisable": null,            "PidsLimit": null,

That is what runlike does.

Give it a container and it prints the docker run command that recreates it, every pesky option included: ports, volumes, networks, limits, labels, the lot.

Download How to use it

zsh

$ runlike -p shop-webdocker run \	--name=shop-web \	--env=TZ=Europe/Berlin \	--env=NGINX_HOST=shop.example.com \	--detach \	--network=shop-net \	--network-alias=web \	--publish=8080:80 \	--volume=shop-data:/usr/share/nginx/html \	--volume=shop-cache:/var/cache/nginx \	--cpus=1.5 \	--memory=256m \	--restart=unless-stopped \	--log-driver=local \	--log-opt=max-size=10m \	'--health-cmd=wget -qO- http://localhost/ || exit 1' \	--health-interval=30s \	--label=app=shop \	--label=managed-by=ansible \	nginx:1.27-alpine$

Download

One static binary, nothing to install. runlike talks to Docker through your docker command, so contexts and DOCKER_HOST work as usual, and the Docker CLI must be installed.

All releases · SHA256SUMS · Intel Mac or another system: use Go or the Docker image below.

From the terminal Homebrew With Go Docker image

Download, rename to runlike, make it executable, put it on your PATH. On macOS and Linux:

curl -fsSLo runlike https://github.com/lavie/runlike/releases/latest/download/runlike-linux-amd64
chmod +x runlike && sudo mv runlike /usr/local/bin/

The macOS binary is signed and notarized by Apple.

On macOS (Apple Silicon) and Linux, from the tap lavie/homebrew-tap. brew upgrade keeps it current.

brew install lavie/tap/runlike

Go 1.24 or later. Lands in $(go env GOPATH)/bin.

go install github.com/lavie/runlike/v2/cmd/runlike@latest

assaflavie/runlike ships runlike with the Docker CLI. Mount the socket:

docker run --rm -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock assaflavie/runlike CONTAINER

Or make it an alias:

alias runlike="docker run --rm -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock assaflavie/runlike"

Usage

Point it at a container. Read the line, edit it, run it.

runlike web: Prints the docker run command for the container web, on one line, every value quoted for the shell.
eval "$(runlike --no-name web)": Run the copy. Why eval? A bare $(runlike web) makes the shell split the output on spaces and keep the quotes as text, so GREETING=hello world reaches Docker as two broken arguments. eval parses the line the way it would if you typed it.
runlike -p web: Pretty. One option per line, as in the example above. Easier to read, and to delete the one line you want to change.
docker inspect web | runlike --stdin: From saved JSON. No daemon needed: paste inspect output from a ticket, a backup or another machine. Without image data runlike prints a bit more than it has to (see caveats).
--no-name: Leaves out --name, so the copy does not collide with the original. Use it whenever the original is still running.
--no-labels or -l: Leaves out --label. Handy for containers that Compose or an orchestrator covered in metadata.
--use-volume-id: Keeps the generated names of anonymous volumes, so the copy reuses their data instead of starting with fresh ones.
--shell powershell or --shell cmd: Quotes for PowerShell 7.3 or later, or for cmd.exe, instead of a POSIX shell. Paste the line; no eval there.

Caveats

A few things can't be copied exactly: Docker doesn't keep them, or docker run has no flag for them. Here is what to watch for.

Seccomp profiles are stored as JSON, not as the file name you passed. runlike prints the JSON; save it to a file and pass that instead.
Exec-form health checks from a Dockerfile (HEALTHCHECK CMD ["curl", …]) have no docker run flag. They come back as --health-cmd, which runs through /bin/sh.
-e NAME without a value copies NAME from your environment when you run the line, which may differ from the original's empty value.
The same variable set twice: only the last counts; runlike prints both.
MAC addresses on further networks: Docker reports a pinned MAC only for the first network. On others, runlike prints none, so a copy never duplicates a random one. If you pinned it, add mac-address= to that --network yourself.
Upper case on extra networks is lowercased by docker run itself in the long --network=name=… form.
--stdin mode has no image and no daemon to ask: values the image already sets are printed too, container: targets come out as IDs, and only Docker's built-in defaults are left out.
Hyper-V isolation on Windows is tested on saved inspect data only.
Client-only options such as --pull, --quiet, --detach-keys and --sig-proxy are never stored by Docker, so no tool can read them back.

The full table of all 103 options, with what each one does in runlike: docs/options.md.

Contributing

runlike lives at github.com/lavie/runlike. Found a container it gets wrong? Open an issue with the docker inspect output (minus secrets). Pull requests are welcome; every option is checked by a round trip against a real Docker daemon, so bring a test.

runlike 2.0 is written and maintained by AI coding agents; a human maintainer approves every release.