Install hub-tool with Homebrew, scoop

Project links

• Homepage
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• hub-tool

Project history

The docker/hub-tool repository was created in September 2020. Its README labels the project as a Docker experiment intended to gather user feedback and fold useful functionality into the Docker CLI.

The GitHub releases show a compact 0.3 and 0.4 series from 2021 through 2024. The repository metadata marks the project as archived, which fits the README's stated experimental purpose rather than a permanent standalone CLI.

Adoption history

hub-tool had enough distribution value to land in Homebrew and Scoop, but its adoption story is narrower than Docker itself. It served people who wanted Docker Hub operations from a shell while Docker evaluated which workflows belonged in the main Docker CLI.

The README asks users to provide feedback in the issue tracker and says larger changes should be discussed first. That community posture makes it a feedback vehicle for Docker Hub UX rather than a broad plugin platform.

How it is used

The README documents downloading a release binary, placing `hub-tool` on PATH, or building from source with Go modules. Users log in with a Docker Hub username, then run commands such as tag listing to inspect images, digests, status, update time, push time, pull time, and size.

Credentials follow Docker's normal credential storage conventions rather than a hub-tool-specific config file; the curated credentials paths point to Docker's `config.json` locations on Unix-like systems and Windows.

Why package nerds care

hub-tool is package-nerd significant as a snapshot of Docker experimenting with product functionality outside the core `docker` binary. It is the kind of short-lived official utility package that tells you how a platform vendor tested workflows before absorbing or retiring them.

Its archived state also matters: package indexes may continue to know about an executable after the upstream project has served its experiment. That makes source-backed history useful for distinguishing a dead random CLI from an official Docker experiment.

Timeline

• 2020: GitHub repository created under Docker.
• 2021: v0.3.1 and v0.4.x releases published.
• 2022: v0.4.5 release published.
• 2024: v0.4.6 release published.
• 2026: Repository metadata marks docker/hub-tool as archived.

Related projects

• Docker CLI is the intended destination for lessons from the experiment, according to the README.
• Docker Hub is the service hub-tool interacts with.
• Docker Desktop and Docker Engine provide the broader Docker environment expected by the README prerequisites.
• Registry-oriented tools such as skopeo and crane overlap around container-image metadata, but hub-tool is specifically tied to Docker Hub.

Sources

• GitHub releases supply the 2021, 2022, and 2024 release timeline.
• GitHub repository metadata supplies the creation date, description, license, popularity signal, and archived state.
• Homebrew and input package-manager metadata support package-manager adoption.
• The README supplies the experimental status, Docker CLI feedback goal, Docker Hub purpose, install method, login flow, tag-listing example, feedback request, and build instructions.