[Nix-dev] NIx and portability

[emery at vfemail.net]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 12:38:23AM +1100, Roger Qiu wrote:
> Hey thats pretty cool. What exactly is genode and how does it compare with
> MirageOS? Where do you see it going?
> On 19/02/2015 3:40 PM, <emery at vfemail.net> wrote:
>

Genode is intended to be a low-complexity, high-security, general purpose
operating system. It supports multiple host microkernels and its root
process can be executed as a kernel on ARM. But it is not ready for general
use as there are still a lot of missing system services and components.

 From what I understand MirageOS is a system for building specialized
unikernels that can only be used for single applications (as a feature),
whereas Genode is general purpose and will support dynamic runtime
configuration and virtualization. There has been talk of supporting
MirageOS guests but I think there is a lot to get done before that will be
a priority.

I'm interested in using the NOVA microhypervisor as my host kernel and
running virtualized NixOS guests in the Genode environment. At this point I
have a custom Nix based build system for Genode that builds simple bootable
compositions and integrates with the NixOS boot modules. What I want to do
is build a Genode host with a nested NixOS build, rather than the other way
around.

Emery