apptainer-macos

Run Apptainer on macOS with one command.

Apptainer is Linux-only, so on a Mac it has to run inside a Linux container. This installer wires up Docker Desktop as that Linux VM and drops a small apptainer wrapper into ~/.local/bin that transparently runs the official Apptainer container. After install you just type apptainer ... like you would on Linux.

What it does

• Installs Homebrew if it's missing.
• Installs qemu and lima (handy if you'd rather run a native Lima VM).
• Installs Docker Desktop (the daemon that provides the Linux VM) and starts it.
• Pulls the pinned Apptainer image.
• Installs bin/apptainer to ~/.local/bin/apptainer and adds it to your PATH.

If apptainer --version already works the script exits immediately.

Install

git clone https://github.com/jonserr/apptainer-macos.git
cd apptainer-macos
./install.sh

Then open a new terminal (or source ~/.zshrc) and test:

apptainer --version

You may be asked for your admin password (Homebrew + Docker Desktop first run)

Usage

Build a Red Hat / Rocky / Alma image. Example rhel9.def:

Bootstrap: docker
From: rockylinux:9
%post
    dnf -y update && dnf -y install gcc make

Then:

apptainer build rhel9.sif rhel9.def
apptainer run rhel9.sif

Config

The Apptainer version is pinned in install.sh:

APPT_VER="1.4.5"

Change it and re-run ./install.sh to upgrade. See available tags here.

How it works

bin/apptainer is a thin wrapper around:

docker run --rm -it --privileged \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v "$PWD":"$PWD" -w "$PWD" \
  --entrypoint apptainer \
  ghcr.io/apptainer/apptainer:<version> "$@"

Mounts your current directory at the same path inside the container so host paths Apptainer binds resolve correctly, and runs --privileged so image builds work. The installer copies this template and substitutes the pinned version.

License - MIT