Fun and games with Docker login on macOS

I've been around the houses with Docker Desktop, Podman and Docker via Homebrew on my Mac over the past few months

I saw something curious this morning, whilst trying to log into IBM Container Registry 

ic cr login

Logging 'docker' in to 'uk.icr.io'...

FAILED

Failed to 'docker login' to 'uk.icr.io' with error: Error saving credentials: error storing credentials - err: docker-credential-desktop resolves to executable in current directory (./docker-credential-desktop), out: ``

I then tried the same auth process using docker login 

docker login --username iamapikey uk.icr.io

but with the same effect: -

Password:

Error saving credentials: error storing credentials - err: docker-credential-desktop resolves to executable in current directory (./docker-credential-desktop), out: ``

In case I was missing something, I even tried the Docker Creds Helper: -

brew install docker-credential-helper

but to no avail.

Finally, in desperation, I nuked my Docker credentials file - which is a TERRIBLE thing imho 

rm ~/.docker/config.json

and tried again: -

docker login --username iamapikey uk.icr.io

Password:

Login Succeeded

Even better, now that I'd installed the creds helper - which caches the creds in the macOS Keychain, the config.json is somewhat cleaner: -

cat ~/.docker/config.json

{

"auths": {

"uk.icr.io": {}

},

"credsStore": "osxkeychain"

}

Better still, the IBM Cloud CLI is also happy: -

ic cr login

Logging 'docker' in to 'uk.icr.io'...

Logged in to 'uk.icr.io'.

OK