What Do runc's Release Names Say?
Open the opencontainers/runc GitHub repository, and right there in the Releases sidebar you’ll see:
“路漫漫其修远兮，吾将上下而求索！”
(“The road ahead is long and winding; I shall search high and low.”)
This is not garbled text. A line from Li Sao by Qu Yuan—one of the most celebrated poems in Chinese literature, written around 300 BC—is genuinely tagged next to runc v1.4.0, the latest release of the single most critical low-level component underpinning the global container ecosystem.
If you scroll further, or look at its sibling project umoci, you’ll find this has been a tradition spanning years: maintainer Aleksa Sarai (cyphar) attaches a quote, lyric, or anime line as a subtitle to every release. Shakespeare, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Attack on Titan, Pushkin, Britney Spears—it’s all there.
Below is a complete catalogue of the sources behind all 60 release names across runc and umoci. Some quotes have a clear connection to the release’s contents, some reflect the maintainer’s mood at the time, and some I genuinely cannot figure out. But regardless, these subtitles tell the story of a remarkably vivid open-source maintenance history.
runc
v1.4.0
“路漫漫其修远兮，吾将上下而求索！”
(“The road ahead is long and winding; I shall search high and low.”)
—Qu Yuan, Li Sao (c. 300 BC)
Released 2025-11-27. The first stable release of runc v1.4, supporting runtime-spec v1.3.
v1.3.4
“Take me to your heart, take me to your soul.”
—Michael Learns to Rock, “Take Me to Your Heart” (the English-language version of Jacky Cheung’s Mandarin hit Kiss Goodbye)
Released 2025-11-27. Fixes regression bugs introduced in v1.3.3—new bugs caused by bug fixes. Whoever was debugging this late at night probably had this on loop.
v1.2.9
“Stars hide your fires, let me rest tonight.”
—Shakespeare, Macbeth, modified
The original line is “Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires”—Macbeth’s soliloquy before plotting regicide. The maintainer swapped the second half for “let me rest tonight.” Murderous intent became exhaustion.
Released 2025-11-27, also fixing regression bugs.
v1.4.0-rc.3, v1.3.3, v1.2.8
“その日、人類は思い出した。” / “奴らに支配されていた恐怖を” / “鳥籠の中に囚われた屈辱を”
(“That day, humanity remembered—the terror of being dominated by them, and the humiliation of being caged like birds.”)
—Opening narration of Attack on Titan
All three released on the same day (2025-11-05), urgently patching CVE-2025-31133, CVE-2025-52565, and CVE-2025-52881—three high-severity vulnerabilities allowing full container escape. Attackers could bypass runc’s restrictions on writing to /proc files.
Containers are, by nature, cages for processes, and container escape is literally breaking out of the wall. The maintainer split the Attack on Titan opening narration into three sentences, tagging one on each of the three parallel maintenance branches’ security patches. Even the form is deliberate.
v1.4.0-rc.2, v1.4.0-rc.1, v1.3.1, v1.2.7
These four versions (September–October 2025) all quote Katsuhiro Otomo’s AKIRA:
“私の役目は信じるかどうかではない。行うかどうかだ。” (“My duty is not to believe or disbelieve. It is to act.”)
“おめェもボスになったんだろぉ？” (“You’ve become the boss now too, haven’t you?”)
“この瓦礫の山でよぉ” (“In this heap of rubble…”)
“さんをつけろよデコ助野郎！” (“Add ‘-san’ when you say my name, you jerk!”)
Looks like the maintainer binged (or re-watched) AKIRA during this period. v1.3.1 is the first patch release of the 1.3 series, fixing the usual post-major-release edge cases—CPU affinity inheritance, rootfs propagation state, seccomp agent leaks—so “in this heap of rubble” checks out.
v1.3.2
“Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека…”
(“Night, street, lamp, pharmacy…”)
—Alexander Blok, Russian poet
Released 2025-10-03, fixing minor issues like cgroup v1-to-v2 CPU weight conversion. Blok’s poem describes an endless, fatalistic cycle—night, street, lamp, pharmacy, then pharmacy, lamp, street, night, forever. Fitting metaphor for “fix old bug, get new bug.”
v1.3.0
“Mr. President, we must not allow a mine shaft gap!”
—Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Released 2025-04-29. The first stable release of v1.3. The biggest significance of this version isn’t technical detail—it’s that runc adopted a new release and long-term support policy, officially ending support for the v1.1 series. The quote satirizes Cold War arms race absurdity.
v1.3.0-rc.2
“Eppur si muove.”
(“And yet it moves.”)
—Galileo (attributed)
Released 2025-04-09, fixing a regression from rc.1: it was reading the host’s /etc/passwd instead of the container’s to set the HOME environment variable. rc.1 shipped with a regression immediately, but the project kept moving forward—“and yet it moves.”
v1.2.6
“Hasta la victoria, siempre.”
(“Until victory, always.”)
—Che Guevara
Released 2025-03-17, fixing runc exec time namespace handling and older kernel compatibility issues.
v1.3.0-rc.1
“No tengo miedo al invierno, con tu recuerdo lleno de sol.”
(“I do not fear winter, for my memories of you are full of sunshine.”)
—Classic Spanish lyric/poem
Released 2025-03-04. The first release candidate for 1.3.0. Includes breaking API changes to libcontainer, official support for OCI runtime-spec 1.2.1, and the new release and long-term support policy. A pivotal release bridging past and future.
v1.2.5
“Мороз и солнце; день чудесный!”
(“Frost and sun; what a wonderful day!”)
—Alexander Pushkin, “Winter Morning”
Released 2025-02-14. This version works around an upstream systemd regression that severely impacted NVIDIA GPU workloads in containers. When a painful workaround finally starts working, it probably does feel like the sun breaking through a bitter winter.
v1.2.4
“Христос се роди!”
(“Christ is born!”)
—Traditional Orthodox Christmas greeting
Released 2025-01-07, Orthodox Christmas Day. Technically, it was an unwilling compromise: v1.2.0 had removed tun/tap devices from the default whitelist for security reasons, but this broke Docker and Podman for many users. This version adds them back. A Christmas gift.
v1.2.3
“Winter is not a season, it’s a celebration.”
—Anamika Mishra, Indian author
Released 2024-12-11, fixing EEXIST errors from concurrent mountpoint creation in shared root filesystems (which had been causing BuildKit failures) and eBPF compatibility regression on older kernels.
v1.2.2
“Specialization is for insects.”
—Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
Released 2024-11-16, fixing rootless container deletion failures on read-only cgroup environments. Heinlein’s full quote argues that a human being should be capable of many things. Apt for runc—a component that needs to adapt to every conceivable host environment.
v1.2.1
“No existe una escuela que enseñe a vivir.”
(“There is no school that teaches you how to live.”)
Released 2024-11-01. Includes a critical fix affecting SELinux distributions and completely removes the runc-dmz feature that had just been introduced in 1.2.0 due to its excessive limitations. Adding something and immediately removing it—indeed, no school teaches you this.
v1.2.0
“できるときにできることをやるんだ。それが今だ。”
(“You gotta take what you can, when you can, while you can… and you gotta do it now.”)
—Japanese dub of the film Almost Famous
Released 2024-10-22. The v1.2.0 stable release. Introduces overlayfs-based /proc/self/exe clone protection and completes the CVE-2024-45310 fix.
v1.1.15
“How, dear sir, did you cross the flood? By not stopping, friend, and by not straining I crossed the flood.”
—Saṁyutta Nikāya, Buddhist scripture
Released 2024-10-07, fixing ppc64le seccomp compatibility and a high-severity defect where container mounts could leak into the host namespace on older kernels. No rush, no strain—just deal with each problem as it comes.
v1.2.0-rc.3
“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.”
—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Released 2024-09-03, fixing CVE-2024-45310.
v1.1.14
“年を取っていいことは、驚かなくなることね。”
(“The nice thing about getting old is that nothing surprises you anymore.”)
—Sophie, Howl’s Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki)
Released 2024-09-03. The fourteenth patch in the v1.1 series. At this point, it’s seen everything.
v1.2.0-rc.2
“TRUE or FALSE, it’s a problem!”
Released 2024-06-26. Introduces numerous new features and breaking changes; minimum build requirement raised to Go 1.20.
v1.1.13
“There is no certainty in the world. This is the only certainty I have.”
—Pliny the Elder, Roman scholar
Released 2024-06-13, fixing race conditions between runc list and runc delete, among other issues. The only certainty is that there will always be uncertain bugs in the code.
v1.2.0-rc.1
“There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.”
—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Released 2024-04-03. The first release candidate for the 1.2 branch. In the Hitchhiker’s Guide, knowing where your towel is means you’re a thoroughly reliable, well-prepared person. This version upgrades to OCI runtime-spec 1.2.0, introduces id-mapped bind-mounts, and two new CVE-2019-5736 mitigation mechanisms. Before setting out on a major release, pack your towel first.
v1.1.12
“Now you’re thinking with Portals™!”
—Tagline and achievement name from the game Portal
Released 2024-01-31, urgently fixing CVE-2024-21626. The vulnerability’s mechanism: a file descriptor leaked internally within runc was exploited to open a channel between host and container—the attacker literally opened a “portal” between two isolated spaces.
v1.1.11
“Happy New Year!”
Released 2024-01-02. Exactly what it says.
v1.1.10
“Śruba, przykręcona we śnie, nie zmieni sytuacji, jaka panuje na jawie.”
(“A screw tightened in a dream will not change the situation in waking life.”)
—Stanisław Jerzy Lec, Polish aphorist and poet
Released 2023-11-01, fixing cgroup issues and tmpcopyup’s umask permission dependency. Time to wake up and fix real bugs.
v1.1.9
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
—Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”
Released 2023-08-11, fixing a tmpfs regression (lost sticky bit) introduced in v1.1.8. The previous version accidentally cracked something. The crack exposed the problem; the problem led to the fix.
v1.1.8
“海纳百川 有容乃大”
(“The sea admits hundreds of rivers—greatness lies in inclusiveness.”)
—Lin Zexu (19th-century Chinese statesman)
Released 2023-07-19. The headline feature: official RISC-V (riscv64) architecture support. “Inclusiveness” fits perfectly here.
v1.1.7
“Ночевала тучка золотая на груди утеса-великана.”
(“A golden cloud spent the night on the breast of a giant cliff.”)
—Mikhail Lermontov, “The Cliff” (Russian poet)
Released 2023-04-27. The last planned release in the 1.1 series.
v1.1.6
“In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”
—Benjamin Franklin
Released 2023-04-12, a concentrated batch of cgroup fixes. For a low-level runtime maintainer, perhaps there’s a third certainty: cgroups will always have edge-case bugs to fix.
v1.1.5
“囚われた屈辱は 反撃の嚆矢だ”
(“The humiliation of captivity is the signal arrow of counterattack.”)
—“Guren no Yumiya” (Crimson Bow and Arrow), Attack on Titan opening theme
Released 2023-03-29, urgently fixing three container escape and privilege escalation vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-25809, CVE-2023-27561, CVE-2023-28642). Container escape again, Attack on Titan again.
v1.1.4
“If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.”
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Released 2022-08-25, urgently fixing a systemd device rule regression accidentally introduced in v1.1.3. Pursuing perfection broke existing functionality. Tolstoy was right.
v1.1.3
“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
—Terry Pratchett, Eric (frequently used as a humorous take on the Big Bang)
Released 2022-06-09, fixing s390x seccomp rules, systemd communication mechanisms, and other deep-seated issues. Everything was calm, and then it exploded.
v1.1.2
“I should think I’m going to be a perpetual student.”
—Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard (Trofimov’s line)
Released 2022-05-11, fixing low-severity CVE-2022-29162 (processes unintentionally inheriting non-empty Linux capabilities). Linux’s security model is bottomless; everyone is a perpetual student.
v1.1.1
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
—Isaac Asimov, Foundation
Released 2022-03-29, fixing multiple bugs where runc would unnecessarily exit with errors under specific configurations—making runc stop “violently” crashing at the first sign of trouble.
v1.1.0
“A plan depends as much upon execution as it does upon concept.”
—Frank Herbert, Dune
Released 2022-01-17. The first stable release of the 1.1 series.
v1.1.0-rc.1
“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”
—Frank Herbert, Dune
Released 2021-12-14. Introduces RDMA cgroup support, seccomp SCMP_ACT_NOTIFY, and many other new features. Two consecutive Dune quotes—perhaps timed with the Villeneuve film release.
v1.0.3
“If you were waiting for the opportune moment, that was it.”
—Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean
Released 2021-12-06, fixing CVE-2021-43784 (though it turned out to be unexploitable in released versions). Better safe than sorry.
v1.0.2
“Given the right lever, you can move a planet.”
—Archimedes, paraphrased
Released 2021-08-23, fixing multiple issues affecting Kubernetes and implementing reproducible builds.
v1.0.1
“If in doubt, Meriadoc, always follow your nose.”
—Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings
Released 2021-07-16. The first patch release after 1.0. After five years of work culminating in 1.0.0, real-world production immediately exposed a batch of new problems. Nothing to do but follow instinct and experience through the dark.
v1.0.0
“A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.”
—Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings
Released 2021-06-22.
Counting from v1.0.0-rc1 in 2016, runc’s 1.0 stable release took five years. Five years, approximately 422 contributors, countless RC versions. The community joked endlessly about “when is 1.0 actually shipping,” and the maintainer delivered the perfect response with Gandalf’s line: a wizard is never late.
v1.0.0-rc95
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
—Michael Corleone, The Godfather Part III
The RC journey leading to the 1.0.0 release is a drama in itself.
Released 2021-05-19, fixing CVE-2021-30465. Just when you think the RC phase is almost over, you get pulled back in.
v1.0.0-rc94
“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Released 2021-05-10, fixing rc93 regression bugs. The RC release cycle had dragged on so long that time itself felt like an illusion.
v1.0.0-rc93
“I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Released 2021-02-04, announcing a feature freeze. This version was indeed released on a Thursday.
v1.0.0-rc92
“Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.”
—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Released 2020-08-06, an emergency hotfix. rc91 “felt almost perfect” but shipped with a major bug affecting Docker. In the book, this phrase describes a machine-synthesized liquid that bears absolutely no resemblance to tea.
v1.0.0-rc91
“Just Hook a Right Over Here”
Released 2020-07-02. An ordinary directional phrase—but also a pun on this version’s key update: the long-awaited OCI Hooks mechanism was finally merged.
v1.0.0-rc90
“We Have To Go Back!”
—Jack Shephard, Lost
Released 2020-06-02. The story behind this version is more interesting than the quote itself. Because “rc10” sorts lexicographically before “rc2,” Go modules couldn’t correctly identify the latest version. The maintainers had to jump the version number straight to rc90—the code is identical to rc10, purely to fix version sorting. “We have to go back!” was meant quite literally.
v1.0.0-rc10
“Procfs Strikes Back”
—A play on Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Released 2020-01-24, hotfixing CVE-2019-19921. Just when 1.0 seemed within reach, a procfs-related security vulnerability struck back.
v1.0.0-rc9
“Watch out for that first step, it’s a doozy!”
—Groundhog Day (1993)
Released 2019-10-05, hotfixing CVE-2019-16884. Trapped in an endless RC loop, every attempt to take the first step toward 1.0 lands in a new pit.
v1.0.0-rc8
“Oops, We Did It Again!”
—Britney Spears, “Oops!… I Did It Again”
Released 2019-04-26. rc7 had just fixed a high-severity vulnerability, but introduced a new regression that broke older kernels—meaning many users couldn’t upgrade to get the security fix.
v1.0.0-rc7
“The Eleventh Hour”
Released 2019-03-28, providing emergency mitigation for CVE-2019-5736. With 1.0 on the horizon, a high-severity container escape vulnerability appeared at the last possible moment.
v1.0.0-rc6
“For Real This Time”
Released 2018-11-22, announcing a feature freeze. The maintainer solemnly declared “this time we’re really shipping 1.0”—a flag that would stand for nearly three years before being fulfilled.
v1.0.0-rc5
“The Final Stretch”
Released 2018-02-27. “The final stretch” stretched on for over three more years.
umoci
v0.6.0
“Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.”
—Classic underground/subway announcement
Released 2025-10-15. Contains breaking Go API changes. Mind the gap when upgrading.
v0.5.1
“🖤 Yuki (2021-2025)”
In the release notes, Sarai wrote that most of the code he’d written over the past four years was done with a cat named Yuki purring on his chest. This version is dedicated to her.
Released 2025-09-06.
v0.5.0
“A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early; he arrives precisely when he means to.”
—The Lord of the Rings
Released 2025-05-21. The same quote used for runc v1.0.0. Some things are worth saying twice.
Afterword
These handwritten subtitles serve no technical function. CI/CD pipelines won’t read them, and the container runtime doesn’t care what Qu Yuan had to say. But their very existence is a statement: this code was not auto-generated from the void. Behind it stand specific people who get tired, get frustrated, and loop Kiss Goodbye on their headphones at two in the morning.