Ruby supports Pathname objects which are more appropriate than strings for encoding paths (or more bluntly: paths aren't strings).
Builtin functions like File.open honor Pathname objects, and it would be great if this library did as well. This can be as simple as attaching a .to_s to any incoming function argument used as a path, or even rewriting sections of the API to leverage Pathname directly.
e.g. this function
https://github.com/swipely/docker-api/blob/d0d12c41eb736240551250ed2cfd261ad43f144c/lib/docker/util.rb#L136-L143
Could be rewritten
def create_dir_tar(directory_or_pathname)
directory = directory_or_pathname.to_s ###### <-- add .to_s here
tempfile = create_temp_file
directory += '/' unless directory.end_with?('/') # Or, consider using Pathname to avoid this string hack
create_relative_dir_tar(directory, tempfile)
File.new(tempfile.path, 'r')
end