apptainer ☆
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Description:
Application container and unprivileged sandbox platform for Linux
Type: Formula  |  Latest Version: 1.4.5@0  |  Tracked Since: Dec 17, 2025
Links: Homepage  |  formulae.brew.sh
Category: Developer tools
Tags: containers hpc sandbox reproducibility linux devops
Install: brew install apptainer
About:
Apptainer is an open-source container platform designed for performance-intensive and secure scientific computing. It enables users to create and run containers in unprivileged environments, ensuring strict isolation and reproducibility for HPC and AI workloads. The tool is a successor to Singularity and is widely adopted for its native support for GPU passthrough and MPI integration.
Key Features:
  • Unprivileged sandboxing and rootless execution
  • Native support for GPUs and high-performance interconnects (MPI)
  • Immutable, single-file SIF (Singularity Image Format) images
  • Strong security model with minimal container breakout risk
  • Seamless integration with existing HPC schedulers (Slurm, etc.)
Use Cases:
  • Running reproducible scientific and AI/ML research on shared HPC clusters
  • Packaging complex simulation workflows with all dependencies
  • Deploying secure, performance-critical applications in multi-tenant environments
Alternatives:
  • Docker – Docker requires root privileges for the daemon and is generally disallowed on multi-user HPC systems, whereas Apptainer is designed for unprivileged, secure operation.
  • Podman – Podman offers rootless containers but is less focused on the specific HPC requirements like MPI and GPU integration that Apptainer targets natively.
Version History
Detected Version Rev Change Commit
Dec 2, 2025 7:49pm 0 VERSION_BUMP b9e2e4aa
Dec 4, 2024 7:51pm 0 VERSION_BUMP 6feb721a
Nov 17, 2024 4:39pm 0 VERSION_BUMP 8a4a711f
Oct 30, 2024 6:24pm 0 VERSION_BUMP c9b4e90f
Oct 22, 2024 9:29pm 0 NEW 253e77b0
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