GitLab fails to detect Linux docker version

[xasc]

Description

Linux builds with GitLab CI are failing with the error:

cibuildwheel: error: Build failed because docker is too old or is not working properly.

I have this section in my CI configuration:

build-linux:
  stage: build
  image: python:3.12
  # make a docker daemon available for cibuildwheel to use
  services:
    - name: docker:dind
      entrypoint: ["env", "-u", "DOCKER_HOST"]
      command: ["dockerd-entrypoint.sh"]
  variables:
    DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker:2375/
    DOCKER_DRIVER: overlay2
    # See https://github.com/docker-library/docker/pull/166
    DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR: ""
  script:
    - curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh
    - python -m pip install cibuildwheel==3.2.1
    - docker version -f '{{json .}}'
    - cibuildwheel --output-dir wheelhouse --debug-traceback
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - wheelhouse/
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG
    - when: manual

This is the output of docker version -f '{{json .}}':

{"Client":{"Platform":{"Name":"Docker Engine - Community"},"Version":"29.0.0","ApiVersion":"1.52","DefaultAPIVersion":"1.52","GitCommit":"3d4129b","GoVersion":"go1.25.4","Os":"linux","Arch":"amd64","BuildTime":"Mon Nov 10 21:46:28 2025","Context":"default"},"Server":{"Platform":{"Name":"Docker Engine - Community"},"Version":"29.0.0","APIVersion":"1.52","MinAPIVersion":"1.44","Os":"linux","Arch":"amd64","Experimental":false,"Components":[{"Name":"Engine","Version":"29.0.0","Details":{"ApiVersion":"1.52","Arch":"amd64","BuildTime":"Mon Nov 10 21:47:52 2025","Experimental":"false","GitCommit":"d105562","GoVersion":"go1.25.4","KernelVersion":"5.15.154+","MinAPIVersion":"1.44","Os":"linux"}},{"Name":"containerd","Version":"v2.1.5","Details":{"GitCommit":"fcd43222d6b07379a4be9786bda52438f0dd16a1"}},{"Name":"runc","Version":"1.3.3","Details":{"GitCommit":"v1.3.3-0-gd842d77"}},{"Name":"docker-init","Version":"0.19.0","Details":{"GitCommit":"de40ad0"}}]}}

This is the error traceback:

cibuildwheel: error: Build failed because docker is too old or is not working properly.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/cibuildwheel/oci_container.py", line 123, in _check_engine_version
    server_api_version = FlexibleVersion(version_info["Server"]["ApiVersion"])
                                         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
KeyError: 'ApiVersion'
The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/cibuildwheel/__main__.py", line 62, in main
    main_inner(global_options)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/cibuildwheel/__main__.py", line 254, in main_inner
    build_in_directory(args)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/cibuildwheel/__main__.py", line 384, in build_in_directory
    platform_module.build(options, tmp_path)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/cibuildwheel/platforms/linux.py", line 475, in build
    with OCIContainer(
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/cibuildwheel/oci_container.py", line 255, in __enter__
    _check_engine_version(self.engine)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.12/site-packages/cibuildwheel/oci_container.py", line 162, in _check_engine_version
    raise OCIEngineTooOldError(msg) from e
cibuildwheel.errors.OCIEngineTooOldError: Build failed because docker is too old or is not working properly.

Has the key naming schema of the docker version information changed between versions or is this something else? Thank you very much!

Build log

https://gist.github.com/xasc/471eb58046dcf324e3394899fe15a75b

CI config

https://gitlab.com/xasc/tree-sitter-t32/-/blob/main/.gitlab-ci.yml?ref_type=heads

[henryiii]

Client is ApiVersion and Server is APIVersion? That's jarring. Maybe we can make this case insensitive?

[joerick]

Ouch. So did Docker change the case of their key name? That would be their bug IMO but using case insensitive lookup would fit this on our side.

[Jonatan-Rydberg-work-account]

how soon will this be fixed?

• within a week
• within a month
• unknown, never or more than a month
• or will you wait and see what docker does?

thanks for creating cibuildwheel

[joerick]

We'll fix it. I assume you're seeing it as well. What platform & version of docker are you seeing the issue on jonatan?

[Thf772]

This isn't a Gitlab-specific issue, though I also have it on Gitlab. The problem is caused by Docker CLI client version 29 (which replaces the key for API version as @henryiii pointed out).

As a temporary workaround, I've replaced curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh in my CI file with this:

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh && sh ./get-docker.sh --version 28 && rm get-docker.sh

This will always install the latest Docker client with major version 28, which didn't break the JSON version output.

[joerick]

This is fixed in v3.3.0.

[Jonatan-Rydberg-work-account]

I confirm that version v3.3.0 fixed the problem for our team.

We used docker image docker:dind (58cdce60b4d9), which is based on Alpine Linux version 3.22.2.

pip show cibuildwheel
Name: cibuildwheel
Version: 3.3.0
Summary: Build Python wheels on CI with minimal configuration.
Home-page: https://github.com/pypa/cibuildwheel
Author:
Author-email: Joe Rickerby <joerick@mac.com>
License-Expression: BSD-2-Clause
Location: /wrk/venv/lib/python3.12/site-packages
Requires: bashlex, bracex, build, certifi, dependency-groups, filelock, humanize, packaging, patchelf, platformdirs, pyelftools, wheel
Required-by:

[Thf772]

As a side note, it seems Docker reverted the change on their end too: docker/cli#6648

[henryiii]

I thought they might, good to know.