arcam

Crates.ioarcam
lib.rsarcam
version1.0.0
created_at2024-09-06 16:05:34.332477+00
updated_at2025-06-22 08:59:05.025602+00
descriptionSandboxed development containers at your fingertips
homepage
repositoryhttps://github.com/sandorex/arcam
max_upload_size
id1366109
size279,027
Sandorex (sandorex)

documentation

README

arcam

Crates.io Version GitHub Release

Fast sandboxed development container manager using podman, minimal permissions by default choose balance between security and convenience

Demo GIF

Features

  • Sandboxed ephemeral container by default (podman defaults with network turned off by default)
  • Pass through audio, wayland, ssh-agent easily on demand with flags or config
  • TOML configuration files for containers, customize your experience per project requirements
  • Override dotfiles locally, so you don't have to rebuild the image to update dotfiles
  • Automatic passwordless sudo (or su if sudo is not available)
  • Host terminfo integration, you do not have to install packages to use kitty, or wezterm
  • Consistant development environment on any distro, especially useful on distros like fedora atomic
  • Offline use, container initialization process does not require internet connection (image has to be downloaded of course)

Installation

You can download binary for latest release here

Alternatively you can install it from crates.io

cargo install arcam

You can also install straight from git

cargo install --git https://github.com/sandorex/arcam
Using Nix

Nix

You can run it in a shell like so

nix shell github:sandorex/arcam

Or install it into your profile

nix profile install github:sandorex/arcam

Usage

To avoid out-of-date documentation probably all the help you'll need is included in the binary itself
For help with config options run arcam config --options, or to see an example config run arcam config --example

Custom Container Images

Custom Container Images

Making a custom container image is same as for any other container, to take full advantage of arcam keep following things in mind:

  • Any file in /init.d will be executed on start of the container as the user, use asroot (wraps su or sudo if it exists) to run commands as root
  • Put dotfiles in /etc/skel which will be copied to user home on start, note that it may be overriden at runtime using --skel
  • All data inside the container (not counting volumes) will be deleted when container stops, to add caching or presistant data use a named volume

For examples you can take a look at my everchanging containers

Comparison to Other Tools

Toolbox / Distrobox

Both are great at their job, to provide a seamless integration with the host but not sandboxing

Arcam provides sandboxed experience by default, and it's your job to choose where/when to sacrifice security for convenience, it's highly configurable

Development Notes

Development Notes

These are notes for me or anyone else hacking on this

Development

I have made toolchain.toml contain everything needed, and flake devshell also works great so development on any machine should be a breeze

Demo GIF

Use asciinema in 80x30 terminal

The GIF was generated with following command

agg --theme monokai \
    --font-family 'FiraCode Nerd Font' \
    --font-size 16 \
    --last-frame-duration 5 \
    demo.cast demo.gif
Commit count: 161

cargo fmt