GitHub - spurin/idle: 📦 idle is a minimalist container designed to do nothing but idle indefinitely

idle: The Chillest Container You'll Ever Run 💤

Ever needed a container that does absolutely nothing, but does it really well? Meet idle, the ultimate minimalist container designed to idle indefinitely with elegance. Lightweight, multi-arch, low level and optimized, it's like the Zen master of containers - perfect for Kubernetes experiments, testing, or just hanging out in your cluster.

Features

Ultra-Lightweight: Runs on a scratch base, with binaries so small you’ll wonder where they went
Purposefully Pointless: It’s not lazy - it’s just really good at waiting
Multi-Arch Zen: Built for every architecture you can think of (probably)
Graceful SIGINT/SIGTERM Handling: Shuts down cleanly when your cluster tells it to go
Prebuilt for the Impatient: Grab it straight from Docker Hub and let it chill in your cluster

Prebuilt Images: Ready to Sit and Stay 🐾

Prebuilt images are available on Docker Hub as spurin/idle. They support the following architectures, so your cluster nodes can all feel included:

linux/arm64
linux/amd64
linux/amd64/v2
linux/riscv64
linux/ppc64le
linux/s390x
linux/386
linux/arm/v6
linux/arm/v7

Run it in Docker

docker run --rm spurin/idle:latest

Kubernetes? Why Not?

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: idle
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: idle
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: idle
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: idle
        image: spurin/idle:latest

How It Works: A Masterclass in Doing Nothing

idle is written in minimalist C. It includes graceful handling of SIGINT/SIGTERM signals for a clean shutdown, ensuring it's a well-behaved citizen in your Kubernetes cluster. The multi-stage Dockerfile:

Compiles C code with gcc and musl to remove unnecessary components
Statically links the code into a self-contained binary
Packs it into a scratch container for maximum minimalism

The program itself:

Loops indefinitely with a 1-second nanosleep
Listens for SIGINT/SIGTERM signals to gracefully exit when asked

Why Use idle?

For Testing and Debugging: Need a placeholder container for your cluster? idle’s got your back
Learn and Tinker: Dive into multi-arch builds, assembly, and minimalist container design
Extreme Minimalism: Impress your friends with a container that weighs less than your config files
Learning Multi-Stage Builds: Demonstrates a clean, efficient container workflow
Cluster Ready: Give your Kubernetes cluster something to meditate on

Why Not Just Use the Pause Container?

The pause container is like Kubernetes' overachiever - handling process reaping, PID 1 compliance, and namespace integration. Great for Kubernetes internals, but do you really need all that when you're just testing?

idle takes a simpler approach:

Bare minimum: Uses nanosleep, skips main(), and avoids runtime dependencies. No glibc, no base OS, just _start and chill.
Smaller size: Aggressively stripped, statically compiled, and leaner than registry.k8s.io/pause:3.9. Compare the two on oci.dag.dev, choosing a common arch like arm64 - the difference speaks for itself.

TL;DR: idle does less, is smaller, and stays true to its name. Why overthink when you can over-idle?

About the Zen of idle 🧘

idle isn’t just a container - it’s a philosophy. Sometimes, the best action is no action at all. Whether you’re testing workloads, experimenting with cluster scaling, or just need a pod to sit there and look pretty, idle is here to remind you: less is more.

License

This project is released into the public domain. You are free to use, modify, distribute, or do whatever you want with it, without restriction or attribution.

For more details, see http://unlicense.org

Thanks! 🙏

@SylvanFranklin @nescohen