[MirageOS-devel] Pioneer project propositions

[Drup <drupyog+caml@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I wanted to propose two new pioneer projects. Given that I can't Mentor 
myself, I prefer to send an email here than to add it directly to the 
wiki. I've left out the difficulty ratting, because I have literally no 
idea. I will gladly help potential mentees (and I review everything 
functoria-related anyway).

Unikernel galery (initial idea by mort)

By combining functoria and js_of_ocaml, it should be possible to make a 
webpage that showcase a set of unikernels (for example, 
mirage-skeleton). We could then go further and allow to run functoria in 
the webpage directly (showing dots and description, and so on).
This project would involved several tasks: First, understand how 
functoria works (and modify it if necessary). Then, become familiar with 
js_of_ocaml and be able to make a pretty webpage with it. Finally, 
improve visualisation and documentation informations that are available 
through "mirage describe" (and the --dot option) and adapt them to a web 
format.

High level devices

A good amount of the mirage devices that are implemented right now (in 
mirage.ml) are fairly low level. Even the one related to web servers 
need a rather large amount of boilerplate to setup (see the 
static_website_tls unikernel in mirage-skeleton). The mirage-seal 
project attempted to improve that by providing an external tool that 
would emit the necessary code. It's also well known that using 
js_of_ocaml in a unikernel is slightly nightmare-ish on the build system 
side.
It should be possible to replace all that by new devices that provide 
everything directly, using judicious functor applications and configure 
scripts. This would involve studying the various idioms that are used 
(in mirage-skeleton, mirage-www and other unikernels) and coming up with 
an API that is flexible enough to cover all the use cases.
I expect this would make it much easier to create new unikernel that do 
high level tasks.


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