Development snapshot: the Go 1.27 product surface

The 2026-08-24 source snapshot turned the initial QEMU prototype into a structured Go 1.27 VM manager with zero-configuration Quick mode, fixed-IP private labs, 13 built-in profiles, Pigsty inventory generation, persistent data disks, schema migration, and reproducible release packaging.

One native runtime

Piglet drives QEMU directly through HVF on macOS and KVM on Linux, running QEMU as the invoking user without falling back to TCG emulation or accepting arbitrary pass-through QEMU flags. It validates image digests and .qcow2 headers, generates pure-Go NoCloud cidata seed images, checks QMP and process identity, verifies SSH readiness, and records atomic state updates, journals, and event logs.

Quick mode on both Tier-1 hosts

Zero-YAML Quick mode runs on macOS arm64 and Linux amd64, provisioning a single meta guest (dba user, 2 vCPU, 4 GiB RAM, 64 GiB root disk, sparse 64 GiB /data disk, user-mode NAT, SSH, and four localhost port forwards) and supporting plan, up, status, ssh/exec, stop/start/restart, drift detection, guarded recreate/destroy, --no-wait, persistent disk retention, key rotation, logs, repair, and redacted debug bundles.

Private labs and host networking

Private mode adds host-network preflight, status, install, and uninstall across both Tier-1 host families:

• macOS uses pinned socket_vmnet v1.2.2 in host mode by default (with shared/FD mode also tested).
• Linux uses a reversible systemd-networkd / NetworkManager / qemu-bridge-helper transaction.

Both platforms keep QEMU unprivileged and block network uninstallation while a lab lease is active. Operators can replace the default 10.10.10.0/24 subnet with another explicit RFC 1918 /24 subnet, moving the profile, host network, lease, node addresses, and Pigsty inventory together.

Four-node full and MinIO runs on both Tier-1 platforms verified fixed IPs, control-node lateral SSH, management internet access, disk identity, stop/start persistence, crash recovery, 30/30 soak cycles, and 16-disk MinIO storage layouts.

Schema-3 profiles and Pigsty inventory integration

The 13 embedded schema-3 profiles define 85 nodes using the dba account—standard nodes carry a 128 GiB /data disk, while MinIO nodes carry four 32 GiB disks. piglet pigsty inventory reads a Pigsty source tree, validates host/VIP/admin/service addresses, rebases custom subnets, and writes mode-0600 inventory files with ownership markers, while pigsty-vm exposes the same lifecycle through typed environment variables.

Persistence, schema upgrades, and automation

• Persistent disks: disks marked persistent: true survive ordinary destroy and compatible recreate runs; deleting them requires typing a confirmation phrase in a TTY or passing destroy --force --delete-persistent --yes-delete-persistent. Project key cleanup defaults to dry-run and requires project purge-keys --yes.
• State migration: schema 0 -> 1 upgrades require stopped nodes and no active lease, creating a backup before applying an atomic update via project upgrade-state --dry-run|--yes.
• Automation surface: includes node selectors, --no-wait, structured JSON responses, typed exit codes, shell completion, managed SSH and /etc/hosts blocks, per-node logs, and redacted support bundles.

Images and release packaging

The embedded image matrix covers el9, el10, d12, d13, u22, u24, and u26 across amd64 and arm64 (7/7 booted per architecture; el8 was excluded from the initial matrix before being normalized in later Barn releases). The build toolchain produces and verifies four platform archives, a Homebrew formula, Linux amd64/arm64 DEB and RPM packages, SHA-256 checksums, SPDX SBOMs, and Cosign/SLSA signing test fixtures across two-run reproducibility checks.

Follow-up completed in RC6 and Barn 0.x

Because catalog schema-3 and inventory changes landed after the initial full/MinIO runs, exact-profile native replays, custom-subnet /etc/hosts publishing, and storage.data_root / ssh.wait_timeout wiring were completed the following day in the 2026-08-25 RC6 candidate, before the project simplified its model around a single Pigsty-native barn.yml inventory in Barn 0.1.0+. See the tutorial, architecture guide, and status page for current Barn behavior.