Prerequisites

Install latest OPAM (at least 1.1.0), following instructions at http://opam.ocaml.org/
Install the mirage package with OPAM, updating your package first if necessary:

    $ opam update -u
    $ opam install mirage
    $ eval `opam config env`

Please ensure that your Mirage command-line version is at least 2.7.0 before proceeding:

    $ mirage --version
    2.7.0

Configure, Build, Run

Each example is invoked in the same way:

$ make sample-configure
$ make sample-build
$ make sample-run

If you want to clean up afterwards, the usual does the trick:

$ make sample-clean

Some global targets are also provided in the Makefile:

$ make all                   ## equivalent to ...
$ make configure build run
$ make clean

Details

The Makefile simply invokes sample-specific sample/Makefile. Each of those invokes the mirage command-line tool to configure, build and run the sample, passing flags and environment as directed. The mirage command-line tool assumes that the OPAM package manager is present and is used to manage installation of an OCaml dependencies.

The mirage command-line tool supports four commands, each of which either uses config.ml in the current directory or supports passing a config.ml directly.

To configure a unikernel before building:

$ mirage configure [config.ml] [--unix|--xen]

The boot target is selected via --unix or --xen. The default is selected based on the presence of target-specific packages, e.g., mirage-unix or mirage-xen.

To build a unikernel:

$ make

The output will be created next to the config.ml file used.

To run a unikernel:

$ make run

This will either execute the native binary created (if on --unix) or create a default .xl configuration file (if on --xen). In the latter case you will need to edit the generated configuration file appropriately if you wish to use block or network devices.

To clean up after building a unikernel:

$ make clean

Experimental Modules

The unikernels in this repository can also be used as a test suite for Mirage. The master branch should work with packages released in the main opam repository, and the mirage-dev branch will work with packages held in a staging repository for experimental Mirage packages. To use the staging repository:

$ opam remote add mirage-dev git://github.com/mirage/mirage-dev

Then upgrade packages and build the mirage-dev branch of mirage-skeleton.

abbysmal/mirage-skeleton