On my OS X host, I'm using Docker CE (18.06.1-ce-mac73 (26764)) with Kubernetes enabled and using Kubernetes orchestration. From this host, I can run a stack deploy to deploy a container to Kubernetes using this simple docker-compose file (kube-compose.yml):

version: '3.3'
services:
  web:
    image: dockerdemos/lab-web
    volumes:
      - "./web/static:/static"
    ports:
      - "9999:80"

and this command-line run from the directory containing the compose file:

docker stack deploy --compose-file ./kube-compose.yml simple_test

However, when I attempt to run the same command from my Jenkins container, Jenkins returns:

this node is not a swarm manager. Use "docker swarm init" or "docker swarm join" to connect this node to swarm and try again

I do not want the docker client in the Jenkins container to be initialized for a swarm since I'm not using Docker swarm on the host.

The Jenkins container is defined in a docker-compose to include a volume mount to the docker host socket endpoint:

version: '3.3'
services:
  jenkins:
    # contains embedded docker client & blueocean plugin
    image: jenkinsci/blueocean:latest
    user: root
    ports:
      - "8080:8080"
      - "50000:50000"
    volumes:
      - ./jenkins_home:/var/jenkins_home
      # run Docker from the host system when the container calls it.
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      # root of simple project
      - .:/home/project
    container_name: jenkins

I have also followed this guide to proxy requests to the docker host with socat: https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/770 and here: Docker-compose: deploying service in multiple hosts.

Finally, I'm using the following Jenkins definition (Jenkinsfile) to call stack to deploy on my host. Jenkins has the Jenkins docker plug-in installed:

node {
    checkout scm

    stage ('Deploy To Kube') {
        docker.withServer('tcp://docker.for.mac.localhost:1234') {
            sh 'docker stack deploy app --compose-file /home/project/kube-compose.yml'
        }
    }      
}

I've also tried changing the withServer signature to:

docker.withServer('unix:///var/run/docker.sock')

and I get the same error response. I am, however, able to telnet to the docker host from the Jenkins container so I know it's reachable. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I know the message is saying to run swarm init, but I am not deploying to swarm.

I checked the version of the docker client in the Jenkins container and it is the same version (Linux variant, however) as I'm using on my host:

Docker version 18.06.1-ce, build d72f525745

Here's the code I've described: https://github.com/ewilansky/localstackdeploy.git

Please let me know if it's possible to do what I'm hoping to do from the Jenkins container. The purpose for all of this is to provide a simple, portable demonstration of a pipeline and deploying to Kubernetes is the last step. I understand that this is not the approach that would be taken anywhere outside of a local development environment.