What is multipass?

It's a system that orchestrates the creation, management and maintenance of virtual machines and associated Ubuntu images to simplify development.

Getting it

On Linux it's available as a classically confined snap, in the beta channel:

sudo snap install multipass --beta --classic

For macOS we provide installers on GitHub.

Usage

Launch an instance

multipass launch --name foo

Run commands in an instance

multipass exec foo lsb_release -a

Find available images

multipass find

Get help

multipass help
multipass help <command>

Get involved!

Here's a set of steps to build and run your own build of multipass:

Build Dependencies

cd <multipass>
apt install devscripts equivs
mk-build-deps -s sudo -i

Building

cd <multipass>
git submodule update --init --recursive
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../
make

Running multipass daemon and client

sudo <multipass>/build/bin/multipassd &
<multipass>/build/bin/multipass launch --name foo

Connect to a running instance

<multipass>/build/bin/multipass shell foo