rtbox: a rust implemention of toolbx

This aims to be a third implementation of a 'toolbox' runtime. We take inspiration from the original as well as distrobox and try to combine the image-baked approach with the feature-completeness of distrobox to try to provide with the best of both worlds: a performant, feature complete toolbox runtime that is self-contained and easy to install.

Goals

Compatible: we will strive to be compatible with toolbx and distrobox wherever possible.
Performant: we will keep performance at the forefront as we believe that performance can hamper usability and adoption of containerized technologies.
Ephemeral: we will enable users to keep ephemeral workflows with a configuration-first mindset
Simple: we will keep the application self-contained and easy to use, advanced features should not get in the way of common usage patterns.

Non-Goals

We will not be implementing anything that is not supported by the upstream podman project.
We will not implement extensive sandboxing.

Installation

Currently this project is in very early stages of development. It doesn't actually do much of anything but it provides a toolbx-compatible CLI implementation. We are using rust so to build this project we can easily do it by following these steps:

Clone the repo
run ./util/cargo build
The resulting binary is in target/debug/rtbox - it is a statically linked binary so you can move it wherever.
The only runtime dependency we have is that a podman socket must be reachable. (systemctl --user enable --now podman.socket)

The ./util/cargo script is a wrapper that will fetch cargo from dockerhub and run the build process. It will also create a folder ${HOME}/.cache/cargo to cache crates for future builds.

Testing

We have a basic testing system with bats the Bash Automated Testing System. With the power of containers we just run our tests on a containerized environment so it should be as easy as: ./test/debug.sh. This will build a container locally rtbox-tester:latest which we use to run the testing.

Usage

This project is currently functionally useless but if you are interested I will leave a sample of the help messages:

$ rtbox --help
A rust implementation of toolbx

Usage: rtbox [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

Commands:
  create  Create a rtbox container
  rm      Remove a rtbox container
  rmi     Remove a rtbox container image
  run     Execute a command inside a rtbox container
  enter   Enter into a new shell session inside a rtbox container
  list    List all rtbox containers
  export  Export an application, service or binary from a rtbox container to the host
  help    Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -v, --verbose <VERBOSE>      
  -y, --assume-yes             Automatically answer yes to all questions
      --log-level <LOG_LEVEL>  Set the logging level [default: info] [possible values: info, warn, error, debug, all]
  -f, --format <FORMAT>        Set the output format [default: human] [possible values: json, human]
      --dry-run                Do not actually execute API calls
  -h, --help                   Print help information

Acknowledgements

Inspiration taken from the toolbx project
A lot of study conducted on distrobox project
We naturally depend on the podman project for all our container-related needs
And many thanks to the podman-api rust crate which makes the implementation of this whole thing easier

License

The code here is released under the GPLv3. You can find a copy of the license here or in the repo itself.

FAQ

Q: Why creating this?

A: I was interested in learning rust and needed a problem domain where I already had experience. Neither toolbox nor distrobox fit my workflow quite well so I though I would take a stab at it.

Q: What benefits will I get if I use `rtbox` instead?

A: Currently none as there no functionality. In the future I plan to implement features that aren't available in other implementations namely: a configuration file format for quickly replicating toolbox setups and a backup system are on my mind.

Q: Configuration file format? What do you mean?

A: This is for my own reference :) - I have some thoughts explaining what I mean on this issue

akdev1l/rtbox