[LanternLight83]

Awesome! This write up is satisfyingly detailed. Prior work in this space includes Plan9 of course, as well as the python project Outrun, which has it's own RPC-based FUSE FS: https://github.com/Overv/outrun

Other approachs to deployment in particular include the functional package managers Nix and Guix, which can create lightweight application images, and could probably be cobbled together into some sort of remote environment replication even across architectures. As I read on, I thought less about how this compares with Guix in regards to application/environment packaging and more about how these things could be glued together in interesting ways, because I think the intro leads in through slightly off-label examples, if that makes sense. Application packaging isn't what this addresses at the end of the day, but it's no less fascinating for it.

[amelius]

Are you saying that outrun's cache after one or more runs of e.g. ffmpeg could be zipped, and turned into a standalone package?

[LanternLight83]

I suppose that's hypothetically possible, but no, it's not been implemented, and that's why I say that the intro seems to come at this from an odd angle-- I don't see u-root's CPU doing that either, despite the comparisons to static linking and other application packaging systems.