Show HN: We are three devs from Kenya and built a Docker alternative in Rust

7 Clein 3 6/17/2025, 11:58:13 AM gist.github.com ↗

Comments (3)

Clein · 8h ago
Hi HN, we're the creators, Clein, Kelly, and Ronald. We're incredibly excited (and nervous!) to share this with you all. We started this project on our phones using termux, driven by the frustration of how complex modern software deployment has become. Our goal is to build a tool that's simple, secure by default, and truly portable. This is version 0.1, a very early MVP, but it demonstrates the core concept. The project is fully open source, and we're here to answer any and all questions. We would be grateful for any feedback, harsh or kind! We're ready to learn.
RonaldOloo · 8h ago
Hey everyone, one of the co-founders here(Ronald Oloo). Just wanted to add a bit more technical context for those interested. We chose Rust for this project for its performance and, more importantly, its safety guarantees. The long-term vision for Sphere's security relies on being able to build a truly minimal, secure sandbox, and Rust's memory safety is a huge part of that foundation. The dependency system right now is simple (it just uses a local JSON index), but it's designed to be the prototype for a future federated SphereHub. The goal is to avoid the centralized pitfalls of other package managers. We know it's a long road ahead to get to true chroot/namespace-level sandboxing, but we're excited about the architecture. Happy to dive into any technical questions about the implementation!
Kellygreg · 8h ago
Co-founder here(kelly Gregory). So excited to finally share this. For me, the 'aha' moment for Sphere was realizing how much of our time as developers is spent fighting our tools instead of solving problems. We're constantly wrestling with environments, dependencies, and CI/CD pipelines. The core idea of Sphere is to make computation a 'solved problem'. You should be able to define a task and have it run predictably, securely, and portably without thinking about the underlying machine. We started with a simple command runner, but the vision is a global, decentralized compute grid. This MVP is just the first step on that journey. We're really keen to hear from other devs about what their biggest pain points are in this area!