> appears to need Docker as a runtime requirement

binctr does not require any runtime component other than a modern linux kernel with unprivileged usernamespace support.

Targetting OSX / Windows does make warp distinct from what I mentioned, though I don't use those OSs so I admit I didn't think about that possible issue.

Anyway, I thought this was a solved problem on both Windows and OSX since they both have conventions for self-contained applications, while linux does not.

I wrote stowage.org to do something similar, having a Docker runtime (which stowage _does_ have) is actually pretty neat in a couple of ways because you also get a kind of basic package management for free. It's pretty nice for sharing dev tools amongst a team. Maybe these things don't have broad use cases, but I think there are a lot of solvable pains here.