SmolBox - Run programs in disposable Linux VMs from Elixir

Hi everyone!

I built SmolBox, an open source Elixir library for running Python, JavaScript and other tools in disposable Linux VMs through SmolVM.

SmolVM provides the VM isolation. SmolBox manages the execution lifecycle under your application’s supervision tree: submitting commands, collecting results and files, handling cancellation, and tracking cleanup.

It provides:

• Stable execution identity and work that can outlive the submitting process.
• Separate tracking of command outcomes, result collection and cleanup.
• Restart recovery through a configured durable store.
• Explicit handling of uncertain outcomes when a connection drops after a command may have been accepted, without silently replaying that work.

Python is the example in the introductory article, but prepared guest images can include other runtimes and tools.

You operate the SmolVM workers and prepare the images. Host resource limits, networking and worker access controls depend on your deployment. The documentation describes the specific Linux configuration we have tested and its remaining boundaries.

How are you handling these workloads in your Elixir applications today? I’m interested in what already works well, what remains difficult, and whether SmolBox fills a useful gap.

Introduction and Python walkthrough:

Documentation: SmolBox v0.1.1 — Documentation
Hex: smolbox | Hex