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Show HN: Lume – OS lightweight CLI for MacOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon

309 points by GreenGames 2y ago

We just open-sourced Lume - a tool we built after hitting walls with existing virtualization options on Apple Silicon. No GUI, no complex stacks - just a single binary that lets you spin up macOS or Linux VMs via CLI or API. Why we built Lume: - Run native macOS VMs in 1 command, using Apple Virtualization.Framework: `lume run macos-sequoia-vanilla:latest` - Prebuilt images on https://ghcr.io/trycua https://ghcr.io/trycua (macOS, Ubuntu on ARM) - API server to manage VMs programmatically `POST /lume/vms` - A python SDK on github.com/trycua/pylume Run prebuilt macOS images in just 1 step: lume run macos-sequoia-vanilla:latest How to Install: brew tap trycua/lume brew install lume You can also download the `lume.pkg.tar.gz` archive from the latest release https://github.com/trycua/lume/releases https://github.com/trycua/lume/releases, extract it, and install the package manually. Local API Server: `lume` exposes a local HTTP API server that listens on `http://localhost:3000/lume http://localhost:3000/lume`, enabling automated management of VMs. lume serve For detailed API documentation, please refer to API Reference(https://github.com/trycua/lume/blob/main/docs/API-Reference.md https://github.com/trycua/lume/blob/main/docs/API-Reference....). HN devs - would love raw feedback on the API design and whether this solves your Apple Silicon VM pain points. What would make you replace UTM/Multipass/Docker Desktop with this? Repo: https://github.com/trycua/lume https://github.com/trycua/lume Python SDK: github.com/trycua/pylume Discord for direct feedback: https://discord.gg/8p56E2KJ https://discord.gg/8p56E2KJ

TekMol 2y ago
I wish it was possible to run a Debian VM on iOS. For laptops, there are many nice options. But for tablets, the latest iPads are currently unmatched at under 600 grams for a 13" tablet. So I would love to use one of those.
- terhechte 2y ago
  You can, with ish (https://ish.app https://ish.app). It is a bit slow though and doesn't support the newest releases. (Well and by default it runs Alpine instead of Debian)
- Hamuko 2y ago
  UTM? https://getutm.app/ https://getutm.app/
  - plagiarist 2y ago
    I was very curious but it looks like UTM is unable to JIT properly on newer iOS versions. They might want a desktop Debian with better performance.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- marvel_boy 2y ago
  But you can with UTM, don't you?
- byrnedo 2y ago
  I’d check out multipass from canonical. IIRC you can specify the image it uses.
oulipo 2y ago
Would this allow to run a near-native speed VM with a decent-speed Docker server inside, and thus allow to have an Orb-like speed for docker containers?
ricw 2y ago
Is macOS up to scratch to be used as a server these days? Last I checked it would always run into trouble / randomly reboot / become unavailable whenever a new OS update became available. Admittedly this is about 2 years ago. If so, this would be great. Particularly to repurpose older macs.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- hnlmorg 2y ago
  Personally I wouldn’t recommend macOS as a server OS unless you’re doing something that is specifically macOS dependent (like automated e2e testing of macOS / iOS software). Everything server related that is easy to do on Linux or BSD is at least an order of magnitude more painful on macOS. And like Windows, you cannot run it headless. In fact Windows actually had better support for running headless than macOS despite macOS’s unix heritage. Also if you need to run macOS on anything other than spare hardware, then expect to pay a premium. This is particularly true of hosting macOS instances in the cloud. Every time I’ve needed to run macOS as a server, which is a depressingly large amount of times over the years — I’ve had to do that in every job bar one — it’s been a painful process and I’ve had to accept compromises to what would normally be best practices. Stuff like Tart does make things a little easier. But given how locked down macOS and its hardware are, it really should be something Apple gave a lot more love to themselves. Instead they went the other way and discontinued Mac Server, albeit that was some number of years ago now. And things haven’t gotten any better since. As a battle hardened unix greybeard, I’d still prefer to administrate enterprise Windows server over “enterprise macOS” servers. That all said, for any hobby projects, anything is fair game. So if you have spare hardware then go for it. Just don’t expect it to be as “fun” as running Debian on a Rasberry Pi or similar other traditional hobby set ups
  - plagiarist 2y ago
    Years ago I had to administer Jenkins on a MacOS build machine. It broke often. I would have to VNC in to accept license agreements and other trivial tasks. I am nowhere near your level but even what little I wanted was an unnecessary PITA to achieve and maintain.
Khaine 2y ago
How does this compare to Lima[1] and Tart[2], which are similar? Also, would it be possible to run BSDs with this? [1] https://lima-vm.io https://lima-vm.io [2] https://tart.run https://tart.run
- frabonacci 2y ago
  Yes, lume relies on Apple's Virtualization framework and can run BSD on a Mac with Apple silicon: https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon I'll definitely document the option in the README, thanks! On Lima: - Lima focuses on Linux VMs and doesn't support managing macOS VMs. - It is more of a container-oriented way of spinning up Linux VMs. We're still debating whether to go in that direction with lume, but the good news is that it would mostly require tweaking the hooks to expose lume’s core to adopt the containerd standard. I’d love to hear your thoughts - would you find it useful to have a Docker-like interface for starting macOS workloads? Similarly to: https://github.com/qemus/qemu-docker https://github.com/qemus/qemu-docker - Still many dependencies on QEMU, which doesn't play well with Apple silicon - while we opted to support only M chips (80-90% of the market cap today) by relying on the latest Apple Virtualization.Framework bits. On Tart: - We share some similarities when it comes to tart's command-line interface. We extend it and make it more accessible to different frameworks and languages with our local server option (lume serve). We have also an interface for python today: https://github.com/trycua/pylume https://github.com/trycua/pylume - Going forward, we'd like to focus more on creating tools around developers, creating tools for automation and extending the available images in our ghcr registry. Stay tuned for more updates next week! - Lastly, lume is licensed under MIT, so you’re free to use it for commercial purposes. Tart, on the other hand, currently uses a Fair Source license.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Colima is a container focused macOS VM runner.
  - Khaine 2y ago
zxcb1 2y ago
I read GPU and USB passthrough somewhere and did not believe it
- macshome 2y ago
  Why not? Shared USB and a paravirtualized GPU have been on macOS VMs for years now.
  - mrpippy 2y ago
    I’m pretty sure there’s no way to pass USB devices through to a guest VM when using Virtualization.framework (which is required for running macOS VMs)
Retr0id 2y ago
The title of this post took me about 3 attempts to parse, because "OS" is more strongly bound to Operating System in this context (but presumably it's supposed to read as Open Source)
- sheepscreek 2y ago
  Yes, I think OP wanted to say OSS (last S = Software). Edit: Did a quick google search and it seems like the acronym OSS has fallen out of prominence. Probably best to explicitly state “Open Source” nowadays to avoid any confusion.
- hnlmorg 2y ago
  Yes, FOSS is generally used in this context. Though I have occasionally seen OSS used too. - FOSS: Free / open source software - OSS: Open source software.
  - sandropuppo 2y ago
    Yes, super sorry about this. I meant to write OSS but forgot an S, and now it's too late to edit the post. But yes this could FOSS since it's a free tool with MIT license.
    - hnlmorg 2y ago
      No harm done. Anyone, like myself, who read past the title would have understood the submission just fine.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ammmir 2y ago
congrats on the open sourcing and launching! beyond the desire to run VMs in "1 command", i don't quite get the reasoning behind this project. could you elucidate? like, besides running macOS VMs, how is it different from lima, colima, and friends? the name lume is quite unfortunate. the hard part about running VMs isn't really how to launch them (well, ahem, i'm looking at you, qemu), but getting data in and out, and controlling them. some feature requests, if i may ;) # take screenshot # this should do the right thing(TM) and take a screenshot of the logged-in user session, which may not necessarily be the console lume screenshot <vm name> [-o <file.png> | -] # execute command lume exec <vm name> [--as-user <user>] <command> [args] # copy files in and out lume cp <vm name>:<vm path> <local path> lume cp <local path> <vm name>:<vm path> # run clone as new VM # this should appropriately roll the MAC address, IPs, and reseed any RNGs, of course lume run --clone <clone name> <vm name> Can you clone a VM while it's running? The ability to resume a VM within < 1 second would be useful for on-demand workflows without waiting for a full VM bootup sequence, similar to how you can get a firecracker microVM into the state you want, snapshot it.. then clone as you wish, and resume back into the guest. You may need to preinstall an agent (a la Parallel/VMware Tools) to make sure this is seamless and fast.
- f-trycua 2y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! I actually went into more detail about the project's reasoning and how it compares to lima/tart in another comment. Interestingly, we left out the screenshot and exec features from this initial release so the CLI wouldn’t get too cluttered. We’re rolling out another update next week that will let you request screenshots programmatically, stream the VNC session in your browser via noVNC, run commands remotely over SSH, add clipboard support (finally!), and more. As for cloning, you can indeed clone a running VM. However, suspending a VM isn’t supported in this release yet, even though it’s possible with the Apple Virtualization.framework. I’ll open an issue to track that work. Thanks again for the suggestions!
- Demiurge 2y ago
  Honestly, LXD commands and LXD cli would probably have worked with any backend.
mightysashiman 2y ago
Would you mind educating me about use cases for having one or even multiple MacOS VMs on an apple silicon machine please?
- trollbridge 2y ago
  Trying to run complex CI/CD for automated build/test toolchains for building iOS apps. We have a Mac Studio dedicated to that purpose. Periodically something on it stops working (software updates are a common reason). Trying to run CI/CD on a bare metal consumer oriented OS is an exercise in frustration. It’s also handy to be able to sandbox different environments from each other. Once you have multiple projects that need different versions of Xcode, or even macOS (a good example is wanting to spin things on a beta), you need VMs or multiple machines. (And yes I’m aware of tools like Xcodes, but testing on a beta of macOS requires a reboot and a lengthy install.)
  - js2 2y ago
    This. I've been managing a CI/CD system of around 50 macOS build machines for a few years now, previously our own hardware in a data center, currently EC2 Mac instances. All the things Apple puts in place to make macOS more secure and consumer friendly make it really hard to manage as a server, especially if you don't want to use MDM. For example with the current version of macOS, the macOS AMI that Amazon provides requires manually logging in over screen sharing to enable local networking. So I haven't updated to Sequoia yet. As it is, my AMI build process is fully automated but still takes almost 2 hours and involves first mounting the Amazon AMI to a Linux instance to modify parts of the image that are read-only when it's booted from. Our current CI/CD process is to create a unique build user per build, then tear it down afterwards. EC2 has something called root volume replacement to allow you to reset a machine to its AMI, but that still takes too long (~ 10 minutes) to do between every build. (At least with EC2 Macs I no longer need to open a ticket with DC ops when there's a hardware issue.) Using macOS VMs that can be quickly reset makes this all a lot easier, more flexible, secure, and cleaner. The only currently viable options I'm aware of are tart and anka. I'm glad to see some open source competition in this space.
bawana 2y ago
So will this ever be able to run a lightweight windows vm?
- f-trycua 2y ago
  Yes, it will - not sure about the lightweight part though :) We're currently working out the details. It was left out of the initial release, but it’s feasible starting from a Windows on ARM image. I'll create an issue to track this work. Thanks for the feedback!
dangoodmanUT 2y ago
would be nice if you can bind ports!
catskull 2y ago
Looks interesting! I’ve been playing with UTM to do aarch64 VMs and I even cooked up a little Sinatra server to do some AppleScript to reboot the VM and do some other things on the host. I’ll look at this as a more robust solution as to be completely honest, UTM has left a lot to be desired at least for virtualization.
mattbillenstein 2y ago
I know the Mac hardware is pretty trick, but man, I do most of my dev on Linux and have a Framework Laptop (AMD) running Ubuntu; it's just really nice for dev stuff to work the same way it does on our production environment... Also, the frequency and size and time to install MacOS updates - like these computers are blazingly fast from the cpus to the SSDs - after an update has downloaded, what could it possibly be doing that takes 30+ minutes to install? I've never had to wait for an apt-get upgrade that long.
- thewebguyd 2y ago
  Always wondered the same, re: updates. To be fair, macOS I believe is downloading an entire OS image each time. macOS is immutable root, like Fedora Silverblue, so OS updates download the entire OS image each time. On a package-based system you're doing a diff update, essentially. Then again, even Fedora Silverblue image updates don't take nearly as long as macOS. At least both are better than Windows, god knows what's going on in Microsoft's update process.
  - mattbillenstein 2y ago
    Yeah, but the SSDs today can write something like 2GB/s, so even if you're re-writing the entire OS, you should be able to do that in what? 1 minute max? Assuming they're using some fast parallel compression algo as well when unpacking it...
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      No, they’re using slow parallel compression.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
stephenr 2y ago
This looks interesting but unless there's a vagrant plugin to use it, I'm pretty unlikely to spend any serious time using it.
joshlk 2y ago
Can you use to launch an Intel VM on Apple Silicone and visa versa? I’m interested in doing this so I can compile C++ applications for different architectures on MacOS. Do you know of any other “easy” methods?
- latchkey 2y ago
  It should be possible. I did this in the early 90's... I had a windows vm running on a powerpc Mac, writing x86 assembly for college class.
- bydo 2y ago
  I don't believe the built in virtualization framework supports emulation, but you can do this with QEMU. An easy way to get started is with UTM: https://mac.getutm.app https://mac.getutm.app
  - knowitnone 2y ago
    I tried UTM - didn't like it, inconsistent, shows a black screen and you don't know what's going on. Use qemu instead.
- tripplyons 2y ago
  I sometimes use Docker for this, assuming you are talking about running Linux on x86-64.
- mrpippy 2y ago
  You can do this without virtualization/emulation, pass ‘-arch x86_64’ or ‘-arch arm64’ to clang. Or both, for a universal binary. And on Apple Silicon, you can test them both thanks to Rosetta.
toastercat 2y ago
Name clash with the not very well known Lua library, you should strongly consider changing the name https://github.com/rxi/lume https://github.com/rxi/lume
- jimsmart 2y ago
  And also this Lume, which is a 3d-HTML library. https://lume.io https://lume.io
- wslh 2y ago
  Lume[1] is also a static site generator for the Deno runtime[2]. Finding a four-letter name in the Latin alphabet that is unique and still sounds like a real name is nearly impossible. Fortunately, I registered the domain Egont[3] a long time ago, perhaps presciently anticipating the interplay between AI, agents, and ego. Five letters though. [1] https://lume.land/ https://lume.land/ [2] https://deno.com/ https://deno.com/ [3] https://www.egont.com/ https://www.egont.com/
- mmastrac 2y ago
  If it's not well known, it's not really a name clash.
- whocareslol1 2y ago
  [dead]
miles 2y ago
> What would make you replace UTM/Multipass/Docker Desktop with this? Just checked my list of VMs in UTM; 5 Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora), 9 Mac OS X/OS X/macOS (versions stretching back from Tiger to Sequoia), and 10 Windows (XP through 11). Lume would need to support not only Windows but also emulation in order to consider a move.
jppope 2y ago
not really stoked about the name since there are a couple other projects named lume: - https://lume.land/ https://lume.land/ The project looks cool though
gcr 2y ago
great! how does this compare to orbstack? brew install orbstack orb # you're now running in an ubuntu VM
- tonijn 2y ago
  Orb stack is great but it requires a paid license
zombot 2y ago
I would be interested in running older macOS versions in a VM, but those would be x64-based and an Apple Silicon host is impractical for that.
wynemo 2y ago
It's a good project, but it just has too few built-in images.

309 points by GreenGames 2y ago

TekMol 2y ago

I wish it was possible to run a Debian VM on iOS. For laptops, there are many nice options. But for tablets, the latest iPads are currently unmatched at under 600 grams for a 13" tablet. So I would love to use one of those.

terhechte 2y ago
You can, with ish (https://ish.app https://ish.app). It is a bit slow though and doesn't support the newest releases. (Well and by default it runs Alpine instead of Debian)
Hamuko 2y ago
UTM? https://getutm.app/ https://getutm.app/
- plagiarist 2y ago
  I was very curious but it looks like UTM is unable to JIT properly on newer iOS versions. They might want a desktop Debian with better performance.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
marvel_boy 2y ago
But you can with UTM, don't you?
byrnedo 2y ago
I’d check out multipass from canonical. IIRC you can specify the image it uses.

oulipo 2y ago

Would this allow to run a near-native speed VM with a decent-speed Docker server inside, and thus allow to have an Orb-like speed for docker containers?

ricw 2y ago

Is macOS up to scratch to be used as a server these days? Last I checked it would always run into trouble / randomly reboot / become unavailable whenever a new OS update became available. Admittedly this is about 2 years ago. If so, this would be great. Particularly to repurpose older macs.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hnlmorg 2y ago
Personally I wouldn’t recommend macOS as a server OS unless you’re doing something that is specifically macOS dependent (like automated e2e testing of macOS / iOS software). Everything server related that is easy to do on Linux or BSD is at least an order of magnitude more painful on macOS. And like Windows, you cannot run it headless. In fact Windows actually had better support for running headless than macOS despite macOS’s unix heritage. Also if you need to run macOS on anything other than spare hardware, then expect to pay a premium. This is particularly true of hosting macOS instances in the cloud. Every time I’ve needed to run macOS as a server, which is a depressingly large amount of times over the years — I’ve had to do that in every job bar one — it’s been a painful process and I’ve had to accept compromises to what would normally be best practices. Stuff like Tart does make things a little easier. But given how locked down macOS and its hardware are, it really should be something Apple gave a lot more love to themselves. Instead they went the other way and discontinued Mac Server, albeit that was some number of years ago now. And things haven’t gotten any better since. As a battle hardened unix greybeard, I’d still prefer to administrate enterprise Windows server over “enterprise macOS” servers. That all said, for any hobby projects, anything is fair game. So if you have spare hardware then go for it. Just don’t expect it to be as “fun” as running Debian on a Rasberry Pi or similar other traditional hobby set ups
- plagiarist 2y ago
  Years ago I had to administer Jenkins on a MacOS build machine. It broke often. I would have to VNC in to accept license agreements and other trivial tasks. I am nowhere near your level but even what little I wanted was an unnecessary PITA to achieve and maintain.

Khaine 2y ago

How does this compare to Lima[1] and Tart[2], which are similar? Also, would it be possible to run BSDs with this? [1] https://lima-vm.io https://lima-vm.io [2] https://tart.run https://tart.run

frabonacci 2y ago
Yes, lume relies on Apple's Virtualization framework and can run BSD on a Mac with Apple silicon: https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon https://wiki.freebsd.org/AppleSilicon I'll definitely document the option in the README, thanks! On Lima: - Lima focuses on Linux VMs and doesn't support managing macOS VMs. - It is more of a container-oriented way of spinning up Linux VMs. We're still debating whether to go in that direction with lume, but the good news is that it would mostly require tweaking the hooks to expose lume’s core to adopt the containerd standard. I’d love to hear your thoughts - would you find it useful to have a Docker-like interface for starting macOS workloads? Similarly to: https://github.com/qemus/qemu-docker https://github.com/qemus/qemu-docker - Still many dependencies on QEMU, which doesn't play well with Apple silicon - while we opted to support only M chips (80-90% of the market cap today) by relying on the latest Apple Virtualization.Framework bits. On Tart: - We share some similarities when it comes to tart's command-line interface. We extend it and make it more accessible to different frameworks and languages with our local server option (lume serve). We have also an interface for python today: https://github.com/trycua/pylume https://github.com/trycua/pylume - Going forward, we'd like to focus more on creating tools around developers, creating tools for automation and extending the available images in our ghcr registry. Stay tuned for more updates next week! - Lastly, lume is licensed under MIT, so you’re free to use it for commercial purposes. Tart, on the other hand, currently uses a Fair Source license.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fragmede 2y ago
  Colima is a container focused macOS VM runner.
- Khaine 2y ago

zxcb1 2y ago

I read GPU and USB passthrough somewhere and did not believe it

macshome 2y ago
Why not? Shared USB and a paravirtualized GPU have been on macOS VMs for years now.
- mrpippy 2y ago
  I’m pretty sure there’s no way to pass USB devices through to a guest VM when using Virtualization.framework (which is required for running macOS VMs)

Retr0id 2y ago

The title of this post took me about 3 attempts to parse, because "OS" is more strongly bound to Operating System in this context (but presumably it's supposed to read as Open Source)

sheepscreek 2y ago
Yes, I think OP wanted to say OSS (last S = Software). Edit: Did a quick google search and it seems like the acronym OSS has fallen out of prominence. Probably best to explicitly state “Open Source” nowadays to avoid any confusion.
hnlmorg 2y ago
Yes, FOSS is generally used in this context. Though I have occasionally seen OSS used too. - FOSS: Free / open source software - OSS: Open source software.
- sandropuppo 2y ago
  Yes, super sorry about this. I meant to write OSS but forgot an S, and now it's too late to edit the post. But yes this could FOSS since it's a free tool with MIT license.
  - hnlmorg 2y ago
    No harm done. Anyone, like myself, who read past the title would have understood the submission just fine.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ammmir 2y ago

congrats on the open sourcing and launching! beyond the desire to run VMs in "1 command", i don't quite get the reasoning behind this project. could you elucidate? like, besides running macOS VMs, how is it different from lima, colima, and friends? the name lume is quite unfortunate. the hard part about running VMs isn't really how to launch them (well, ahem, i'm looking at you, qemu), but getting data in and out, and controlling them. some feature requests, if i may ;) # take screenshot # this should do the right thing(TM) and take a screenshot of the logged-in user session, which may not necessarily be the console lume screenshot <vm name> [-o <file.png> | -] # execute command lume exec <vm name> [--as-user <user>] <command> [args] # copy files in and out lume cp <vm name>:<vm path> <local path> lume cp <local path> <vm name>:<vm path> # run clone as new VM # this should appropriately roll the MAC address, IPs, and reseed any RNGs, of course lume run --clone <clone name> <vm name> Can you clone a VM while it's running? The ability to resume a VM within < 1 second would be useful for on-demand workflows without waiting for a full VM bootup sequence, similar to how you can get a firecracker microVM into the state you want, snapshot it.. then clone as you wish, and resume back into the guest. You may need to preinstall an agent (a la Parallel/VMware Tools) to make sure this is seamless and fast.

f-trycua 2y ago
Thanks for the feedback! I actually went into more detail about the project's reasoning and how it compares to lima/tart in another comment. Interestingly, we left out the screenshot and exec features from this initial release so the CLI wouldn’t get too cluttered. We’re rolling out another update next week that will let you request screenshots programmatically, stream the VNC session in your browser via noVNC, run commands remotely over SSH, add clipboard support (finally!), and more. As for cloning, you can indeed clone a running VM. However, suspending a VM isn’t supported in this release yet, even though it’s possible with the Apple Virtualization.framework. I’ll open an issue to track that work. Thanks again for the suggestions!
Demiurge 2y ago
Honestly, LXD commands and LXD cli would probably have worked with any backend.

mightysashiman 2y ago

Would you mind educating me about use cases for having one or even multiple MacOS VMs on an apple silicon machine please?

trollbridge 2y ago
Trying to run complex CI/CD for automated build/test toolchains for building iOS apps. We have a Mac Studio dedicated to that purpose. Periodically something on it stops working (software updates are a common reason). Trying to run CI/CD on a bare metal consumer oriented OS is an exercise in frustration. It’s also handy to be able to sandbox different environments from each other. Once you have multiple projects that need different versions of Xcode, or even macOS (a good example is wanting to spin things on a beta), you need VMs or multiple machines. (And yes I’m aware of tools like Xcodes, but testing on a beta of macOS requires a reboot and a lengthy install.)
- js2 2y ago
  This. I've been managing a CI/CD system of around 50 macOS build machines for a few years now, previously our own hardware in a data center, currently EC2 Mac instances. All the things Apple puts in place to make macOS more secure and consumer friendly make it really hard to manage as a server, especially if you don't want to use MDM. For example with the current version of macOS, the macOS AMI that Amazon provides requires manually logging in over screen sharing to enable local networking. So I haven't updated to Sequoia yet. As it is, my AMI build process is fully automated but still takes almost 2 hours and involves first mounting the Amazon AMI to a Linux instance to modify parts of the image that are read-only when it's booted from. Our current CI/CD process is to create a unique build user per build, then tear it down afterwards. EC2 has something called root volume replacement to allow you to reset a machine to its AMI, but that still takes too long (~ 10 minutes) to do between every build. (At least with EC2 Macs I no longer need to open a ticket with DC ops when there's a hardware issue.) Using macOS VMs that can be quickly reset makes this all a lot easier, more flexible, secure, and cleaner. The only currently viable options I'm aware of are tart and anka. I'm glad to see some open source competition in this space.

bawana 2y ago

So will this ever be able to run a lightweight windows vm?

f-trycua 2y ago
Yes, it will - not sure about the lightweight part though :) We're currently working out the details. It was left out of the initial release, but it’s feasible starting from a Windows on ARM image. I'll create an issue to track this work. Thanks for the feedback!

dangoodmanUT 2y ago

would be nice if you can bind ports!

catskull 2y ago

Looks interesting! I’ve been playing with UTM to do aarch64 VMs and I even cooked up a little Sinatra server to do some AppleScript to reboot the VM and do some other things on the host. I’ll look at this as a more robust solution as to be completely honest, UTM has left a lot to be desired at least for virtualization.

mattbillenstein 2y ago

I know the Mac hardware is pretty trick, but man, I do most of my dev on Linux and have a Framework Laptop (AMD) running Ubuntu; it's just really nice for dev stuff to work the same way it does on our production environment... Also, the frequency and size and time to install MacOS updates - like these computers are blazingly fast from the cpus to the SSDs - after an update has downloaded, what could it possibly be doing that takes 30+ minutes to install? I've never had to wait for an apt-get upgrade that long.

thewebguyd 2y ago
Always wondered the same, re: updates. To be fair, macOS I believe is downloading an entire OS image each time. macOS is immutable root, like Fedora Silverblue, so OS updates download the entire OS image each time. On a package-based system you're doing a diff update, essentially. Then again, even Fedora Silverblue image updates don't take nearly as long as macOS. At least both are better than Windows, god knows what's going on in Microsoft's update process.
- mattbillenstein 2y ago
  Yeah, but the SSDs today can write something like 2GB/s, so even if you're re-writing the entire OS, you should be able to do that in what? 1 minute max? Assuming they're using some fast parallel compression algo as well when unpacking it...
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    No, they’re using slow parallel compression.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

stephenr 2y ago

This looks interesting but unless there's a vagrant plugin to use it, I'm pretty unlikely to spend any serious time using it.

joshlk 2y ago

Can you use to launch an Intel VM on Apple Silicone and visa versa? I’m interested in doing this so I can compile C++ applications for different architectures on MacOS. Do you know of any other “easy” methods?

latchkey 2y ago
It should be possible. I did this in the early 90's... I had a windows vm running on a powerpc Mac, writing x86 assembly for college class.
bydo 2y ago
I don't believe the built in virtualization framework supports emulation, but you can do this with QEMU. An easy way to get started is with UTM: https://mac.getutm.app https://mac.getutm.app
- knowitnone 2y ago
  I tried UTM - didn't like it, inconsistent, shows a black screen and you don't know what's going on. Use qemu instead.
tripplyons 2y ago
I sometimes use Docker for this, assuming you are talking about running Linux on x86-64.
mrpippy 2y ago
You can do this without virtualization/emulation, pass ‘-arch x86_64’ or ‘-arch arm64’ to clang. Or both, for a universal binary. And on Apple Silicon, you can test them both thanks to Rosetta.

toastercat 2y ago

Name clash with the not very well known Lua library, you should strongly consider changing the name https://github.com/rxi/lume https://github.com/rxi/lume

jimsmart 2y ago
And also this Lume, which is a 3d-HTML library. https://lume.io https://lume.io
wslh 2y ago
Lume[1] is also a static site generator for the Deno runtime[2]. Finding a four-letter name in the Latin alphabet that is unique and still sounds like a real name is nearly impossible. Fortunately, I registered the domain Egont[3] a long time ago, perhaps presciently anticipating the interplay between AI, agents, and ego. Five letters though. [1] https://lume.land/ https://lume.land/ [2] https://deno.com/ https://deno.com/ [3] https://www.egont.com/ https://www.egont.com/
mmastrac 2y ago
If it's not well known, it's not really a name clash.
whocareslol1 2y ago
[dead]

miles 2y ago

> What would make you replace UTM/Multipass/Docker Desktop with this? Just checked my list of VMs in UTM; 5 Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora), 9 Mac OS X/OS X/macOS (versions stretching back from Tiger to Sequoia), and 10 Windows (XP through 11). Lume would need to support not only Windows but also emulation in order to consider a move.

jppope 2y ago

not really stoked about the name since there are a couple other projects named lume: - https://lume.land/ https://lume.land/ The project looks cool though

gcr 2y ago

great! how does this compare to orbstack? brew install orbstack orb # you're now running in an ubuntu VM

tonijn 2y ago
Orb stack is great but it requires a paid license

zombot 2y ago

I would be interested in running older macOS versions in a VM, but those would be x64-based and an Apple Silicon host is impractical for that.

wynemo 2y ago

It's a good project, but it just has too few built-in images.