Thrive

THakur Runtime Isolation Virtualization Engine — a daemonless, rootless, OCI-compliant container runtime written in Go.

Thrive reimplements core container runtime concepts from the ground up: image distribution, namespace isolation, resource limits, and networking — with no central daemon and a fully auditable codebase.

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Features

Capability	Status
OCI image pull / push / build	Complete
Namespace isolation (PID, mount, UTS, IPC, net)	Complete
cgroups v2 resource limits	Complete
Rootless (user namespaces)	Complete
Lazy-pull via FUSE chunk store	Complete
P2P image distribution (DHT)	Complete
AES-256-GCM secret store	Complete
Ed25519 image signing	Complete
CNI network + port forwarding	Complete
OpenTelemetry observability	Complete
Systemd socket activation	Complete
macOS VM desktop (vfkit)	Complete

Architecture

thrive CLI (cross-platform)
cmd/thrive  ──proxy──▶  cmd/thrived (Linux daemon)
                              │
                    ┌─────────▼─────────┐
                    │     thrived        │
                    │  runtime + ns      │
                    │  network + CNI     │
                    │  cgroup v2         │
                    │  OCI image store   │
                    │  FUSE lazy-pull    │
                    │  DHT p2p           │
                    │  AES-GCM secrets   │
                    │  Ed25519 signing   │
                    └────────────────────┘

Quick Start

Linux

git clone https://github.com/thakurtpr/thrive
cd thrive && make install
thrive --version

thrive run alpine:3.19 -- echo hello
thrive ps
thrive images

macOS (Desktop VM via vfkit)

git clone https://github.com/thakurtpr/thrive
cd thrive
GOOS=darwin go build -o bin/thrive ./cmd/thrive

thrive desktop init
thrive desktop start
thrive run alpine:3.19 -- echo hello

Building from Source

Requires Go 1.25+.

make build          # CLI for current OS
make build-linux    # linux/amd64 + linux/arm64
make build-darwin   # darwin/arm64 CLI
make test           # full test suite
make test-cover     # with coverage report
make lint           # golangci-lint

Installation

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo make install-systemd
sudo systemctl enable --now thrive.socket

Shell Installer

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thakurtpr/thrive/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Documentation

• Architecture
• Roadmap
• Changelog
• Contributing
• Security Policy
• Governance
• CNCF Due Diligence
• Adopters

Linux Requirements

• Kernel 5.11+, cgroups v2
• /dev/fuse for lazy-pull
• Go 1.25+ to build from source

Community

• Issues: GitHub Issues
• Discussions: GitHub Discussions
• Code of Conduct: CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

License

MIT