# NVIDIA/libnvidia-container

NVIDIA container runtime library

Repository: https://github.com/NVIDIA/libnvidia-container
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/libnvidia-container
Language: C
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-09-02T18:53:55+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 95/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 100, release rhythm 85, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3428, "days_push": 0, "days_rel": 20, "gap_med": 37.5, "n_releases_24m": 17}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1123, forks 272 (observed 2026-09-03T02:15:06.837363+00:00)

## What it is
A C library and CLI utility (nvidia-container-cli) that automatically configures GNU/Linux containers to leverage NVIDIA hardware, relying on kernel primitives and remaining agnostic of the container runtime. It underpins NVIDIA's container runtime ecosystem for exposing GPUs, drivers, and utilities inside containers.

## Use cases
- expose nvidia gpus inside docker containers
- run cuda workloads in containers
- configure gpu passthrough for linux containers
- build a custom container runtime with gpu support
- mount nvidia driver libraries into a container rootfs
- run nvidia-smi from inside a container

## When to choose
- you need GPU access in Linux containers without depending on a specific container runtime
- you are building or integrating a container runtime that must support NVIDIA GPUs
- you want a low-level CLI to manually configure GPU namespaces and mounts

## When to avoid
- you just want to run GPU containers with Docker - use nvidia-container-toolkit / nvidia-container-runtime instead
- you are on non-Linux platforms such as Windows or macOS
- you need GPU support outside of containerized environments

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: stable
- function: container-runtime, developer-tools, cli
- domain: gpu-computing, developer-tools, cloud-computing
- platform: c, cli
- tags: nvidia, gpu, containers, cuda, container-runtime, linux, docker

## Member repositories
- NVIDIA/libnvidia-container (main) score 95

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-09-03T02:15:06.837363+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 2026-08-30T06:40:58.424768+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/NVIDIA/libnvidia-container (fetched 2026-09-03T02:15:06.837363+00:00, sha f5110c3951d6)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.