lima VS UTM

You can run a virtual machine (e.g. lima) from inside a nix-shell, exactly as you would do with a regular shell.

for others similarly curious, here's an example of the thing: https://github.com/noop-inc/template-java-spring-boot/blob/m...

they seem to be using the excellent lima <https://github.com/lima-vm/lima#readme> for booting on macOS; I run colima for its containerd and k8s support but strongly recommend both projects $(brew install lima colima)

Lima is what I use as well. It's quick and easy to just fire up a VM with default settings, but also very easy to configure with different file sharing options, port forwarding, different linux distributions, etc. (their examples are also pretty good IMO [1]).

In particular I use it to run an amd64 VM, which I need to run a stubborn service for work that doesn't run on arm CPUs.

[1] https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/tree/master/examples

Lima (1) is a project that packages Linux distros for MacOS and executes them via qemu in the backend. Maybe you could solve your problem by launching one of their vms and inspecting the command line it generates. You might find an option you were missing.

(1) https://github.com/lima-vm/lima

If you wish to delve into all the configuration possibilities for Lima VM, you can visit this resource.

I'd say Lima and Colima should be enough for most use cases:

https://lima-vm.io/

https://github.com/abiosoft/colima

Github: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima

Lima wraps QEMU in a simple CLI, with neat features for container users, such as filesystem sharing and automatic localhost port forwarding, as well as DNS and proxy propagation for enterprise networks. Rancher Desktop wraps Lima with k3s integration and GUI.

Talks: https://github.com/lima-vm/lima/blob/master/docs/talks.md

If you have TrollStore then install the HV version of UTM to try for yourself: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/releases/latest/download/UTM.HV.ipa

Researching a little showed that this is basically what can be expected running x86 emulation and the systems will just be wonky and slow, although it was running flawlessly, just slow.

There seem to be ways to use Rosetta2 inside a VM [0] to then translate binaries but I found no official support or documentation (using UTM+QEMU that was), this would be such a cool feature, at least there are discussions about it [1,2]

- [0] https://mybyways.com/blog/using-rosetta-in-a-utm-linux-vm-wi...

- [1] https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/discussions/4939

- [2] https://github.com/utmapp/UTM/issues/5460

UTM is open source too though: https://github.com/utmapp/UTM#license

UTM makes it easy to set up and manage macOS and Windows virtual machines. This can be especially useful for developers such as Tauri contributors who need to test their applications across multiple platforms, or for those looking to experiment with different operating systems without affecting their primary system.

If you don't need high performance and want to use the OS only occasionally, check UTM.app, at https://mac.getutm.app/ (or https://github.com/utmapp/UTM ). Free, open source.