Under the hood with Apple's new Containerization framework

a year ago

Apple announced a new Containerization framework and CLI tool at WWDC 2025, open-sourced and written in Swift.
The framework uses a VM-per-container approach via the Kata Containers project, providing isolation but with memory inefficiency for development.
The CLI tool is OCI compliant, but its place among existing tools like runc, containerd, and Docker is unclear.
Installation requires macOS Tahoe beta and Xcode 26 beta to avoid Swift link errors.
The system downloads a Linux kernel for each container, leveraging macOS Virtualization framework for isolation.
Performance issues noted, such as slow filesystem extraction (e.g., 10 minutes for OCaml images vs. seconds on Docker).
Missing features include macOS and iOS containers, and GPU support for Linux containers.
The release doesn't immediately threaten Docker's dominance due to its low-level nature and lack of quality-of-life features.
Apple's open-source approach is praised, potentially benefiting the broader container ecosystem.

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