Multipass¶

The Multipass provider lets you define and manage local Ubuntu VMs using Canonical Multipass. It follows the standard cdkx two-phase workflow — synth and deploy — and wraps the multipass CLI under the hood.

Local-only provider

Multipass runs on your machine. No cloud account or API token is required. You do need Multipass installed locally and available in PATH.

Installation¶

yarn add @cdk-x/multipass

How it works¶

Synth — your app runs and writes a cloud assembly (cdkx.out/).
Deploy — cdkx deploy reads the assembly and calls multipass launch for each instance. cdkx destroy calls multipass delete --purge.

.cdkxrc.ts  →  cdkx synth  →  cdkx.out/  →  cdkx deploy  →  multipass launch …

Quick example¶

.cdkxrc.ts
import { App, Stack } from '@cdk-x/core';
import { MltInstance, MltProvider } from '@cdk-x/multipass';

const app = new App();
const stack = new Stack(app, 'DevVMs', { provider: new MltProvider() });

new MltInstance(stack, 'Dev', {
  name: 'dev',
  image: 'jammy',
  cpus: 4,
  memory: '4G',
  disk: '20G',
});

app.synth();

Then run:

cdkx synth    # produces cdkx.out/
cdkx deploy   # runs: multipass launch jammy --name dev --cpus 4 --memory 4G --disk 20G
cdkx destroy  # runs: multipass delete dev --purge

Example with network and cloud-init¶

Networks and mounts are declared inline on MltInstance — no separate constructs needed:

.cdkxrc.ts
import { App, Stack } from '@cdk-x/core';
import { MltInstance, MltProvider } from '@cdk-x/multipass';

const app = new App();
const stack = new Stack(app, 'DevVMs', { provider: new MltProvider() });

new MltInstance(stack, 'Dev', {
  name: 'dev',
  image: 'jammy',
  cpus: 4,
  memory: '4G',
  disk: '20G',
  networks: [{ name: 'bridge', mode: 'auto' }],
  mounts: [{ source: '/Users/me/code', target: '/home/ubuntu/code' }],
  cloudInit: '#cloud-config\npackages:\n  - git\n  - curl\n',
});

app.synth();

Supported resources¶

Construct	Type string	Description
`MltInstance`	`Multipass::Compute::Instance`	A Ubuntu VM managed by Multipass

Networks and mounts are inline

There are no separate MltNetwork or MltMount constructs. Network interfaces and directory mounts are declared as plain objects directly on MltInstance.networks and MltInstance.mounts. See Instance for details.

Resource lifecycle¶

All MltInstance props are create-only. Once a VM is launched its configuration cannot be updated — the engine will never call update. To change a VM, destroy it and redeploy.

Operation	What happens
`cdkx deploy`	Calls `multipass launch` for each new instance
`cdkx destroy`	Calls `multipass delete --purge` for each instance