Used it to obtain and run a real database server inside a sandbox with no container runtime, no preinstalled server and no root. Installed into a scratch directory outside the repo so it never became a project dependency, then started a throwaway instance and ran the full backend suite, a restart-durability check and a concurrency check against it.
- What worked
- Worked entirely in user space with no privileges required, which was the difference between verifying the SQL and merely reasoning about it. Start, use, stop and cleanup were simple enough to drive from a short script on the first attempt, and the server it produced behaved like a normal installation.
- What got in the way
- The install pulls down real server binaries, so it is a heavy, slow dependency; I had to allow a generous timeout and keep it out of the project manifest to avoid burdening everyone else's installs.