Karton is a tool which can transparently run Linux programs:

• 🐧 on a different Linux distribution,
• 🍎 on macOS,
• 💻 on a different architecture (ARMv7 and ARMv8, on a x86-64 host).

To do this, you just need to tell Karton which distro 🐧 to use, which packages 📦 to install, and which directories 📂 to make accessible. This is called an image.

Then you can run your commands inside the image just by adding karton run image-name in front of your commands.

Example

$ uname -a # Show we are running on macOS.
Darwin my-hostname 16.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 16.4.0 [...]

$ # Run the compiler in the Ubuntu image we use for work
$ # (which we called "ubuntu-work"):
$ karton run ubuntu-work gcc -o test_linux test.c

$ # Verify that the program is actually a Linux one.
$ # The files are shared and available both on your
$ # system and in the image:
$ file test_linux
test_linux: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, [...]

$ # Same thing but on 32-bit ARMv7 (in the image we
$ # called "ubuntu-work-arm"):
$ karton run ubuntu-work-arm gcc -o test_arm test.c
$ file test_arm
test_arm: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 [...]

$ # We can run the ARM program:
$ karton run ubuntu-work-arm ./test_arm
[... Output of our program ...]

In another terminal you can attach to the running program and debug it.

$ # Find the PID of the test_arm program.
$ karton run ubuntu-work-arm ps aux | grep test_arm
test_arm    42  [...]  test_arm

$ # Debug it!
$ karton run ubuntu-work-arm gdb --pid 42
GNU gdb (Ubuntu 7.11.1-0ubuntu1~16.04) 7.11.1
Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
[...]
Attaching to process 11
[...]
0x00007f53430e4740 in __nanosleep_nocancel () at ../sysdeps/unix/syscall-template.S:84
84	../sysdeps/unix/syscall-template.S: No such file or directory.
(gdb)

Does typing every time karton run image-name look boring? You can use the alias command, see karton help alias.

Features

• Fast 🏃🏽. Launching a program in an image takes fractions of a second.
• No need to start/stop a virtual machine or container, it's done transparently and quickly.
• Multiple terminals access the same running image. You can start a program in one terminal and attach to it with gdb from another.
• Automatic handling of shared directories and files. Your files are accessible both on your system and to programs running in an image.
• Except for directories you decide to share, the file system is transient. You can reset your changes to the system instantly.
• Can run Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and CentOS images.
• Based on Docker 🐳 containers.