Containerization is a Swift-based framework that runs Linux containers in lightweight virtual machines on Apple Silicon Macs. It provides a native container runtime for macOS, enabling developers to execute Linux containers directly on their Apple Silicon hardware without requiring a separate Linux environment or Docker Desktop.
The framework supports custom Linux kernel injection, allowing users to provide their own kernel images and select per-container kernel versions and configurations. It includes an ext4 filesystem image builder for creating root filesystems from scratch, and an OCI image engine that authenticates with remote registries to pull and push container images. Process lifecycle management handles launching and managing containerized processes with I/O and signal forwarding.
Containerization is distributed as a Swift Package Manager library, making it straightforward to integrate into macOS development projects. The documentation covers installation, API usage, and examples for building and running Linux containers on Apple Silicon.