[ANN] Miou, a simple scheduler for OCaml 5

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I am delighted to announce the release of miou.0.7.0. Whilst this release isn’t quite as impressive as previous ones, it now provides us with a pure OCaml implementation of SSH for our unikernels! This release notably introduces Miou.get, which allows you to wait for and retrieve a task saved in an orphan: for this, we refer you to our documentation available here.

This release also strengthens our ecosystem in general: following http, tls, tcp/ip, smtp, dns and ntp, we can now add ssh to the protocols available for our unikernels (as well as for OCaml applications in general). It is largely thanks to @hannes’s work on migrating from Cstruct.t (which we are now deprecating) to string (a process we began several years ago following observations of performance issues with Cstruct.t) that we have managed to complete mnet-ssh.

And so, thanks to our work on notty/nottui (and lwd), SSH support for unikernels, and one of our MirageOS retreats, we have revived a project developed by @reynir: banawa-chat. It is a unikernel that offers “a chat room for everyone” via SSH; you simply need to connect to it to chat with others (a mini IRC) and it provides a TUI even though the unikernel does not recognise the concept of a terminal! The project is available here (and an opam pin is all you need to obtain banawa.hvt).

output

This consolidation is now taking shape with the emergence of a few unikernels and tools, and we’re taking this opportunity to introduce you to a few that are now available:

  • another older unikernel has just reappeared: pasteur and its deployment https://paste.osau.re/. It brings our efforts to vif and demonstrates how to create a simple web application in the form of a unikernel.
  • aussi is a small experimental project that can be used with Docker to deploy Solo5 unikernels quite simply (a simple docker run is enough now!). However, we still recommend using albatross for production deployment.
  • chaos has finally crossed the Rubicon. Having started this project a year ago to experiment with our new workflow, this NTP server (“Chrony-style”) is now available at osau.re:123

We therefore continue to offer unikernels and actively use them in order to improve them. As such, we would like to thank everyone who provides us with (any kind of) feedback on what we are developing, enabling us to collectively improve what our cooperative can offer the OCaml community (and, more broadly, the users of our unikernels). If you like what we do, you can support us via a donation (directly or via GitHub). Happy hacking!

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