Absolutely, MirageOS is indeed pivotal in the development of unikernels. MirageOS not only developed the unikernel concept but also coined the term 'unikernel'.
MirageOS represents a significant shift in cloud and network computing, focusing on building highly specialized, secure, and efficient unikernels that streamline application deployment by shedding unnecessary components. It also puts extra focus on security, with most of the stack — including TCP and TLS — being rewritten in a type-safe language (OCaml).
Currently, MirageOS is expanding to include bare-metal and embedded systems, aiming to bring the same level of security and efficiency to this domain. The move towards embedded systems is a natural progression for MirageOS, given our emphasis on minimalism and security in environments where resources are limited and reliability is crucial. See for instance what is happening with SpaceOS: https://tarides.com/blog/2023-07-31-ocaml-in-space-welcome-s...
The catch here is Ocaml. You can design your unikernel "bare metal" in any way you want and make it do nothing but the essentials you need ... and design it in any language you want as long as that language is OCaml.
I have especially had hopes for the UniK [1] project, as it was/is written in Go AFAIK. I see now it incorporates work from the Mirage project as well. Not sure what is the status of this project anymore though.
Unik was just a build tool that utilized other projects like Rump, Mirage, IncludeOS, etc. It's now dead since Solo pivoted a very long time ago to service mesh/api gateways.
The GoRump port they use was from us and then we realized we needed to code our own from the ground up for many reasons so we wrote https://nanos.org (runs as a go unikernel in GCP).
I didn't read your message, so I just clicked and I found that great nice project from Solo.io (the company behind Gloo Edge, etc.). Freaking awesome... I thought:
> Not sure what is the status of this project anymore
I tried to search if there are easy ways to do bindings to other languages. There seems to be bindings to C which should make it easier to do bindings to other languages too, but I am not sure whether someone has done that work just yet. Until then, I really doubt this thing will fly. Great project, nothing to say, but OCaml, ...
> MirageOS is a library operating system that constructs unikernels for secure, high-performance network applications across a variety of cloud computing and mobile platforms.
MirageOS represents a significant shift in cloud and network computing, focusing on building highly specialized, secure, and efficient unikernels that streamline application deployment by shedding unnecessary components. It also puts extra focus on security, with most of the stack — including TCP and TLS — being rewritten in a type-safe language (OCaml).
Currently, MirageOS is expanding to include bare-metal and embedded systems, aiming to bring the same level of security and efficiency to this domain. The move towards embedded systems is a natural progression for MirageOS, given our emphasis on minimalism and security in environments where resources are limited and reliability is crucial. See for instance what is happening with SpaceOS: https://tarides.com/blog/2023-07-31-ocaml-in-space-welcome-s...