Differences to bare Gondolin (Why Tuor?)

File-based configuration

This is arguably the most notable difference between Tuor and Gondolin. Gondolin is mostly an SDK (with a limited CLI) and requires you to write JavaScript code for doing anything really. In contrast, Tuor provides a config file-based interface. Config files can be defined on a global (homedir), project-by-project and/or folder-by-folder basis – settings get merged, so you can set global defaults and fine-tune your config for each project. See Configuration for details.

Other features

• Volumes: Instead of mounting an existing host directory like your workspace, mount a "volume" – similarly to a Docker volume, this is a host-backed guest directory managed by Tuor. Useful for persisting guest directories across VM restarts. (E.g. persist the home dir and thereby shell history, agent conversations, …)

• Overlay mounts (experimental): Define overlay mounts, whose (read-only) lower layer is a host directory and whose (writable) upper layer is persisted across VM restarts. In other words: The guest may write to the mount but host files stay unchanged.

• Hide host files: Within a mounted directory, hide select files (e.g. .envrc files with credentials) from the VM guest. You can hard-code the filenames in your Tuor config or use a .tuorignore file on a folder-by-folder basis, similarly to a .gitignore file. (The latter part is still experimental. Also, no glob support yet.)

• Convenience mode for NixOS users (experimental): Have Tuor mount Nix store & related dirs into the VM, set up PATH & other env vars, etc.

Fixes for paper cuts in Gondolin

• Customize file ownership: Gondolin's RealFSProvider passes file ownership data (UID/GID) verbatim from the host to the guest. Tuor allows controlling the UID/GID of a mount or volume that the guest sees, independent of the files' real on-host ownership.