Start
Installation, tutorial, daily operations, and troubleshooting.
Pre-1.0 · Native Go + QEMU
One inventory. One deployment.
Farrow boots a Pigsty-compatible inventory into fixed-IP QEMU virtual machines on macOS and Linux. The same file describes the VMs and deploys Pigsty; there is no project model or second configuration to reconcile.
The simplified line was last native-replayed on macOS arm64 and Ubuntu amd64 on 2026-08-27; no public v1 package exists yet.
The current model
Less machinery, clearer behavior
Farrow targets one trusted local Pigsty lab, not a general-purpose cloud control plane.
Two top-level sections
Documentation and blog
Documentation has only three directories; the blog keeps historical updates separate from the current contract.
Open
Reference
Inventory variables, commands, flags, output, and exit codes.
About
The simplified model, native test matrix, limits, and release gates.
Tutorial
The shortest complete beginner path, including Pigsty handoff.
Configuration
Defaults, disks, shares, naming, addressing, and drift.
Blog
Development snapshots and release notes, kept outside the current docs.
Normal path
Prepare once, then boot
Run these commands beside farrow.yml or pigsty.yml.
farrow setup
farrow up
farrow statusAdd host lines and run up again; new nodes are created, stopped selected nodes start, and running peers stay untouched. Removing a line never destroys a VM.
Product boundaries
Deliberate constraints
One fact
The Pigsty inventory is the VM specification and deployment inventory.
Node-granular
Additions are incremental; changes and deletion require explicit commands.
Owned
Process identity, ownership, paths, and network manifests are verified before mutation.
Native
HVF or KVM only; no silent cross-architecture emulation.
Short answers
Before you begin
Is the working directory still a Farrow project?
No. State is one deployment under ~/.farrow. An explicit or discovered Inventory supplies desired state; without one, lifecycle commands can fall back to the applied spec.
Can I use pigsty.yml directly?
Yes. Farrow consumes the documented VM fields plus a small naming, control-node, and node-admin whitelist; other Pigsty settings stay opaque.
Does setup modify the host?
Yes. It prints and confirms dependency, fixed-IP network, and hosts-helper changes. Linux network smoke failures are rolled back through the ownership manifest.
Is Farrow ready for production?
No. It is a pre-1.0 local development runtime; read the status page for the exact verified matrix and open release gates.