Installation

From Packages

bcvk is available in Fedora 42+ and EPEL 9/10:

sudo dnf install bcvk

Prerequisites

Host Requirements

For building from source:

Rust
Git

For running bcvk:

QEMU/KVM
qemu-img
virtiofsd
Podman
openssh-clients (for libvirt SSH operations)

Optional:

libvirt (for persistent VM features)

sudo systemctl enable --now libvirtd
sudo usermod -a -G libvirt $USER

Target Bootc Image Requirements

For bcvk ephemeral operations, the bootc container images you run must contain:

systemctl (systemd)
objcopy (binutils)
bwrap (bubblewrap)
ssh, ssh-keygen (openssh-clients)

Development Binaries

Pre-built binaries from main are available as OCI artifacts:

# Requires ORAS (https://oras.land/)
# Note: This command pulls the x86_64 architecture binary
oras pull ghcr.io/bootc-dev/bcvk-binary:x86_64-latest
tar -xzf bcvk-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
sudo install -m 755 bcvk-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu /usr/local/bin/bcvk

Building from Source

Without cloning the repo:

cargo install --locked --git https://github.com/bootc-dev/bcvk bcvk

Inside a clone of the repo:

cargo install --locked --path crates/kit

Platform Support

Linux: Supported
macOS: Not supported, use podman-bootc
Windows: Not supported

See the Quick Start Guide to begin using bcvk.

bcvk Documentation