RedLeaf

RedLeaf is a research operating system developed from scratch in Rust to explore the impact of language safety on operating system organization.

Setup

Downloading the code

git clone --recursive https://github.com/mars-research/redleaf.git

Nix

The easiest way to set up a reproducible environment with all dependencies is with Nix. With Nix installed, simply enter the provided nix-shell environment with:

nix-shell

Bash Script

There is also a bash script meant for Debian-based distributions and does not ensure reproducible builds:

./setup.sh

Building

You need a very recent nightly Rust toolchain with the rust-src component, and also the nasm assembler. If you wish to generate a bootable .iso image (required for the qemu targets), you also need to have grub-mkrescue in your PATH.

make check      # Verify that the tree is buildable
make kernel     # Build kernel proper
make domains    # Build domains
make mb2        # Build Multiboot v2 kernel image (redleaf.mb2)
make iso        # Build bootable ISO (redleaf.iso)
make qemu       # Build and launch QEMU
make qemu-nox   # Build and launch QEMU in headless mode
make qemu-kvm   # Build and launch QEMU with KVM

For the qemu targets, specify GDB=true to start a GDB server and pause execution on boot. By default, the build system will build everything in the release mode with optimizations enabled, and you can override this behavior by passing DEBUG=true.

Foliage

Foliage is a multi-purpose tool that helps you inspect domain dependencies, validate their safeness, and discover potential pitfalls. You can invoke the tool at the project root with ./fo.

For example, to view information about the ixgbe domain, run:

./fo crate ixgbe

Publication

RedLeaf: Isolation and Communication in a Safe Operating System(OSDI 20)