tinybridge

TinyBridge is a specialized VM runtime designed for macOS, leveraging Apple's native Virtualization.framework to run Linux virtual machines on Apple Silicon and Intel hardware. It operates through a multi-layered architecture: a Rust-based CLI and daemon communicate via JSON-RPC to a per-VM 'tinybridge-vmhost' process, which interacts with the hypervisor via a Swift-based C ABI bridge. This design ensures that the VM lifecycle—including starting, stopping, and status monitoring—is handled by the native framework. Key capabilities include: - Native Virtualization: Boots real ARM64 Linux kernels (e.g., Ubuntu) using VZVirtualMachine. - Lifecycle Management: Provides a comprehensive CLI for launching, suspending, resuming, and destroying VM environments. - Cloud-Init Support: Supports attaching NoCloud seed ISOs for automated guest configuration, including password and SSH key setup. - Networking: Implements NAT-based networking with DHCP lease tracking to resolve guest IP addresses dynamically. - Diagnostics: Includes a 'doctor' command to verify hardware virtualization support and system requirements. Note: While the project contains scaffolding for Windows and Linux hypervisor backends, these are currently unimplemented. The project is strictly focused on macOS as a development substrate. Users should be aware that the project requires manual setup of environment variables or local builds due to current distribution limitations, and it relies on standard macOS security entitlements for virtualization.