[ANN] nitro 0.2, a tiny but flexible init system and process supervisior

From: Leah Neukirchen <leah_at_vuxu.org>
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2025 16:30:40 +0200

Hello,

I'm happy to announce the initial release of "nitro", a new supervisor
akin to daemontools/runit/perp/s6 that is also usable as a Linux init.

nitro version 0.2 is a beta release: it is mostly feature complete and
has been used in a few situations, but it hasn't been tested heavily
in the real world. Basic documentation exists. Bug reports are
welcome.

There are four main applications nitro is designed for:
- As init for a Linux machine for embedded, desktop or server purposes
- As init for a Linux initramfs
- As init for a Linux container (Docker/Podman/LXC/Kubernetes)
- As unprivileged supervision daemon on POSIX systems

Benefits over other systems are:
- All state is kept in RAM, works without tricks on read-only root file systems.
- Efficient event-driven, polling free operation.
- Zero memory allocations during runtime.
- No unbounded file descriptor usage during runtime.
- One single self-contained binary, plus one optional binary to
  control the system.
- No configuration compilation steps needed, services are simple
  directories containing scripts.
- Supports reliable restarting of services.
- Reliable logging mechanisms per service or as default.
- Support for logging chains spread over several services.
- Works independently of properly set system clock.
- Can be run on FreeBSD from /etc/ttys (sets up file descriptors 0, 1, 2).
- Tiny static binary when using musl libc.

You can find the nitro source at

     https://git.vuxu.org/nitro
     https://github.com/leahneukirchen/nitro

and release tarballs at

     https://leahneukirchen.org/releases/nitro-0.2.tar.gz

Releases are also signed with signify(1) using
https://leahneukirchen.org/releases/nitro.pub namely:
RWQ4n7iirrio0Nm2kwQYdW28BE8+AFuClCL6dlj/C1AO2PXLuhKGVEI8

nitro is licensed under the 0BSD license.

Feedback is welcome by mail or via IRC in #vuxu on irc.libera.chat.

Enjoy,
-- 
Leah Neukirchen  <leah_at_vuxu.org>  https://leahneukirchen.org/
9086861971ff95fcd53eaac9acea3ea8d90fdef7b8a8026fecfb63e2c209a87e  nitro-0.2.tar.gz
22413997c238a06b9fb34b89fc73916ab330cc6b9ef9bae47b04a91d1b326a2f  nitro-0.2.tar.gz.asc
787986f5aa0e9c601f6eaa90d973bf699b767ad03e96974ebb9dd855b1485840  nitro-0.2.tar.gz.sig
Received on Fri Aug 22 2025 - 16:30:40 CEST

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