synadia/ntf-server repository overview

⁠synadia/ntf-server

A NATS Testing Framework Server that spins up real nats-server instances — single servers, clusters, and super-clusters — on demand over real networks, instead of running them embedded in your test process. It hosts a NATS Micro service you drive from your tests over its NATS API. A Go client lives in ntf-client⁠; other languages can drive the API directly.

⁠Quick start

docker run --rm --network host synadia/ntf-server:main serve --advertise=localhost

serve starts the management service; point your tests at nats://localhost:4222. The same binary also carries admin (drive a running service) and trace (capture and inspect traffic) subcommands. See the project README⁠ for service operation and the NATS API; the Go client, config templating, and TLS are documented with ntf-client⁠.

⁠Image tags

Multi-arch (linux/amd64, linux/arm64). Every tag bundles the tester binary with one nats-server version. The first segment is the tester version; nats-<line> / nats-<patch> is the nats-server version.

• vX.Y.Z-nats-<line> pins the tester release to a nats-server line and captures whichever patch was current at release; built once, never moved.
• vX.Y.Z-nats-<patch> pins to an exact nats-server patch. Published for the patch current at release, plus a new one whenever the release is rebuilt against a newer server patch. Use these for byte-specific reproducibility.
• :main / :2.14 / :2.12 float to the latest released tester for each line. :2.14/:2.12 move on tester releases; :main is refreshed nightly against a current nats-server main.
• nightly-* are canaries built nightly against nats-server main and are expected to break occasionally — that's the point.

Base images (golang:, alpine:) float, so a rebuilt tag is not guaranteed byte-identical; tags pin the tester and nats-server versions, not the toolchain.