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What's New in {Singularity} 4.2

This section highlights important changes and new features in {Singularity} 4.2 that are of note to users. See also the "What's New" section in the Admin Guide for administrator-facing changes.

If you are upgrading from a 3.x version of {Singularity} we recommend also reviewing the "What's New" section for 4.0.

OCI-mode

  • A new --layer-format tar flag for singularity push allows layers in an OCI-SIF image to be pushed to library:// and docker:// registries with layers in the standard OCI tar format. Images pushed with --layer-format tar can be pulled and run by other OCI runtimes. See :ref:`sec:layer-format`.

  • Persistent overlays embedded in OCI-SIF files. See :ref:`overlay-oci-sif`.

    • A writable overlay can be added to an OCI-SIF file with the singularity overlay create command. The overlay will be applied read-only, by default, when executing the OCI-SIF. To write changes to the container into the overlay, use the --writable flag.
    • A writable overlay is added to an OCI-SIF file as an ext3 format layer, appended to the encapsulated OCI image. After the overlay has been modified, use the singularity overlay sync command to synchronize the OCI digests with the overlay content.
    • A new singularity overlay seal command converts a writable overlay inside an OCI-SIF image into a read-only squashfs layer. This seals changes made to the image via the overlay, so that they are permanent.
  • OCI-SIF data containers provide a way to package reference data into an OCI-SIF file that can be distributed alongside application containers. See :ref:`sec:data-containers`.

    • A new singularity data package command allows files and directories to be packaged into an OCI-SIF data container.
    • A new --data <data container>:<dest> flag for OCI-Mode allows the contents of a data container to be made available at <dest> inside an application container.

Runtime

  • The new --netns-path flag takes a path to a network namespace to join when starting a container. The root user may join any network namespace. An unprivileged user can only join a network namespace specified in the new allowed netns paths directive in singularity.conf, if they are also listed in allow net users / allow net groups. Not currently supported with --fakeroot, or in --oci mode. See :ref:`sec:netns-path`.
  • Instances can now be started via the new subcommand singularity instance run, which will cause the instance to execute its %runscript rather than the %startscript.