# lizrice/containers-from-scratch

Writing a container in a few lines of Go code, as seen at DockerCon 2017 and on O'Reilly Safari

Repository: https://github.com/lizrice/containers-from-scratch
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/containers-from-scratch
Homepage: http://lizrice.com
Language: Go
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: golang, containers, go, namespaces, cgroups
Last push: 2026-07-13T09:26:59+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 74/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 92, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3424, "days_push": 51, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2040, forks 339 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:08.498961+00:00)

## What it is
A small educational Go codebase demonstrating how to build a minimal container from scratch using Linux namespaces and cgroups, presented at DockerCon 2017 and on O'Reilly Safari. It is a teaching artifact rather than production software, requiring root permissions and Linux-only syscalls.

## Use cases
- learn how containers work internally
- understand Linux namespaces and cgroups
- write a minimal container runtime in Go
- prepare for container security learning
- teach container internals in a workshop

## When to choose
- you want a hands-on, minimal example of container internals
- you are learning Go systems programming with syscalls
- you need material for a talk or tutorial on how containers work

## When to avoid
- you need a production-grade container runtime
- you need rootless containers out of the box
- you target non-Linux platforms

## Facets
- artifact type: learning-resource
- maturity: maintenance
- function: developer-tools, container-runtime
- domain: developer-tools, operating-systems, tutorials
- platform: go
- tags: containers-from-scratch, namespaces, cgroups, educational-demo, live-coding, dockercon, containers, linux

## Member repositories
- lizrice/containers-from-scratch (main) score 74

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:08.498961+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:58:22.250910+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/lizrice/containers-from-scratch (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:08.498961+00:00, sha 384e285b5133)
  - homepage: http://lizrice.com (fetched 2026-08-29T10:38:31.967290+00:00, sha e11f4cd7bf30)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.