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It always seemed to me that FreeBSD in particular could have all the pieces needed to implement the container runtime interface (and thus be able to run contain
by znpy 6y ago
It always seemed to me that FreeBSD in particular could have all the pieces needed to implement the container runtime interface (and thus be able to run containers) but no one ever bothered.
That's kind of a pity, because FreeBSD could be an ideal OS to run containers: a stable system with unified APIs, without 1.8e308 different distros, most of them subtly incompatible with each other.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoThis is close to one of my pet peeves about FreeBSD: They're happy to say that they've had containers for longer than Linux and that Jails are better than Linux containers, and I don't really disagree on technical merit, but they seem to completely overlook that UX and images are Docker's killer features and FreeBSD doesn't have an answer to that[0]. I personally think that implementing a jail-backed OCI runtime and getting docker running on top of it (all of which should be fairly simple to do) would be a huge boost to getting more users - bonus points if it can run FreeBSD-native and Linux images by using the existing Linux-compat layer. I've even looked into actually implementing this myself, but the runc-containerd-docker codebases were too much for me to make sense of so far, unfortunately. [0] Actually, partial caveat: cbsd and bhyve are at least meant to fill this space, I think, but they're neither a perfect match nor as easy to use IMO.
- throwaway201103 6y agoMaybe the FreeBSD project doesn't care about getting more users? It's certainly not a big motivating factor for OpenBSD, but I don't know how FreeBSD feels about it.
- kevans91 6y agoI can't speak for anyone else, but from my perspective (and I suspect others are similar): I like the idea of a jail-backed OCI runtime, but it's not interesting enough to my personal use to overtake any of the other OS-adjacent projects I'd otherwise work on in my spare time. I could be convinced (well, paid) to make it a higher priority, but ultimately it's currently at the bottom of a barrel of much more enticing fish since I'm not really in the demographic that that kind of stuff targets.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoQuite:) And seriously, maybe one of these days I'll find the time to understand how docker works well enough to retrofit it onto FreeBSD, but, indeed... it takes significant time and/or money, and this is currently just a hobby-interest, so there it sits...
- hpkuarg 6y agoSmartOS might interest you. It's not BSD (derived from Solaris), but it is marvelous for OS-level containers.
- ksec 6y agoIs it still being developed? Joyent doesn't seems to be getting any headlines after they have been acquired by Samsung.