Re: [MirageOS-devel] Why does mirage target Xen primarily but not KVM?

[Dave Scott <Dave.Scott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> On 8 Jan 2015, at 02:03, crocket <crockabiscuit@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> I'm just curious.
> 
> Mirage, https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM, and erlang on Xen all
> target Xen but not KVM.

Someone who was sufficiently interested could make Mirage target KVM.
They would need to

- figure out booting: legacy BIOS bootloader? or perhaps EFI?
- write VirtIO block and network drivers

I donât think it would be especially difficult. [ If you or anyone else
wants to give it a go, thatâd be great ]

> What makes Xen the primary build target for unikernels?

IMHO there are probably 2 reasons:

1. Xen provides a low barrier to entry: Xen can run guests in PV mode,
   which avoids dealing with BIOSes/ bootloaders/ 16-bit real mode etc.
   The Xen distribution contains a tiny example OS kernel called âmini-osâ
   partly to make it easy to port existing OSes to Xen. Mirage and other
   unikernels can link with this code directly.

2. the resulting unikernels can be run in places like AWS and Rackspace

Cheers,
Dave
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