It's cool, but this only runs with VirtIO hardware.
If you need real-time low-latency, you don't want any virtual hardware.
I'm not sure what's the practical application here. Either you use containers because you have complex dependencies so you want to just package the whole thing in isolation, or you don't and you might as well run as a normal process.
Here you have a simple self-contained executable image anyway.
But to be honest I never understood the point of virtualization.
But... "So IncludeOS can compile C and C++ applications natively. Currently, these are the only programming languages supported. Weāll add support for other language runtimes in 2019."
Last blog update is 2019. Is the project still alive?
edit: github shows recent activity, so it is encouraging.
Ok but the C abi includes basically all languages. Frankly they could toss C++ in the trash with basically zero impact to their value because who the hell with two neurons to rub together uses C++ anymore?
(Ok this leaves out Go but they picked their path)
Besides, supporting c++ must be a goddamn nightmare.
I agree that people still use C++, I just find it very difficult to imagine a C++ programmer I'd trust as much as the rust compiler. Hence my comment.
FWIW, I programmed C++ for 15 yearsāit's a useful tool, but it doesn't have much use anymore outside of legacy tooling, codebases, and developers who can't learn new things.
I've seen this come up here and elsewhere before, always very cool! I always wonder who's actually using it for production workloads, in what context, etc.
It feels like so much of the world focuses on docker images that alternatives are pretty hard to get going.
What's with the recommendation for a YouTube MP3 converter near the bottom? There seems to be no technological relation so I can only guess the author got paid to include it, but you're legally supposed to disclose if something is a paid ad
This seems like a farce. Most advertising in america is deceptive.
Edit: they seem to only enforce disclosure and they don't actually evaluate whether the ad is deceptive or not. Still this does seem to foreclose on the domain user in question's use of ads, if anyone cares
> If the advertiser doesnāt have proof that the endorserās experience represents what people will generally achieve using the product as described in the ad (for example, by just taking a pill daily for two months), an ad featuring that endorser must make clear to the audience what the generally expected results of following that same regimen are.
Pathetic and spineless. If this were actually enforced 99.99% of ad claims would be illegal.
according to wayback machine the domain expired at the end of 2021. Months later it came back with the sneaky ad. Their page at github https://includeos.github.io/ does not have it. It is safe to assume whoever grabbed the domain has no association to the authors.
You're completely right. It's a squatter and he wants money. The project is not dead, however. It's currently used for research at University of Oslo, and I think we can expect much more activity in the coming years, such as ARM support.
I might add RISC-V support myself, as I am the author of libriscv. We'll see.
> You're completely right. It's a squatter and he wants money. The project is not dead, however. It's currently used for research at University of Oslo
If someone bought the domain and is re-using the same assets to put advertisements up then the author of includeos would have some real teeth in courts...
Yes, we have spoken to a lawyer and it is indeed the case. It still costs money, and we are not sure how to proceed yet, outside of removing links to the domain.
Is that a legal requirement where the owner of that website is?
I agree with you, that ad is placed in a odd place. It looks so out of place, I would believe it was copy-pasted there by mistake, if it weren't for the HTML link.
We are indeed Norwegian! The domain is owned by a squatter now. He wants EUR 3000 to release it back to us. It's simply too much right now. So, I wish that this HN post could change from the squatter URL to GitHub instead.
> Node.js-style callback-based programming - everything happens in one efficient thread with no I/O blocking or unnecessary guest-side context switching.
> No race conditions. Delegated IRQ handling makes race conditions in āuserspaceā āimpossibleā. ā¦unless you implement threads yourself (you have the access) or we do.
An interesting example would be GRiSP where Erlang's BEAM was ported to an Arm Cortex M7 microcontroller with 64 MB of external RAM. https://www.grisp.org/
There's almost no reason to do anything weird with operating systems today, because you can run Linux on a single core of your multi-core machine, and your app at full throttle (no context switching) on the remaining cores.
So for the cost of <1 core and a small amount of RAM>, you get full Linux, full debuggability, SSH, file systems, networking, etc. and your app still runs as fast as it can on the CPU.
Spend your innovation budget on your app, not the OS.
Amazing how we've come full circle. Type II hypervisors treat VM guests as processes, so is it any wonder we've developed ways to develop them as processes? A paravirtualized VM is just a process with a different (and arguably better) system call interface.
The distinction started with rings of protection which was orthogonal to processes. Roger Schell said the guy who designed the one for Intelās 286 had security kernels like GEMSOS in mind. Hereās GEMSOS and STOP so you can see how they did that back in the 1980ās:
Absolutely. Everyone who deploys unikernels to the public clouds does this. Some are better fits than others. AWS for instance you can build an image and deploy an ec2 instance in a matter of seconds.
For a similar take on C++ unikernel, there is also OSv [1,2], from the same authors of seastar [3] and ScyllaDB.
[1] https://github.com/cloudius-systems/osv
[2] https://osv.io/
[3] https://seastar.io/
I found the linked page very confusing, the whole page just say some generic unikernel stuffs
This page is much better, telling me how it is different/interesting https://www.includeos.org/technology.html
It's cool, but this only runs with VirtIO hardware.
If you need real-time low-latency, you don't want any virtual hardware.
I'm not sure what's the practical application here. Either you use containers because you have complex dependencies so you want to just package the whole thing in isolation, or you don't and you might as well run as a normal process. Here you have a simple self-contained executable image anyway.
But to be honest I never understood the point of virtualization.
This seems very interesting!
But... "So IncludeOS can compile C and C++ applications natively. Currently, these are the only programming languages supported. Weāll add support for other language runtimes in 2019."
Last blog update is 2019. Is the project still alive?
edit: github shows recent activity, so it is encouraging.
Ok but the C abi includes basically all languages. Frankly they could toss C++ in the trash with basically zero impact to their value because who the hell with two neurons to rub together uses C++ anymore?
(Ok this leaves out Go but they picked their path)
Besides, supporting c++ must be a goddamn nightmare.
Lets put it this way, C++ is C's Typescript.
Everything about JavaScript WATs applies equally well to C.
> who the hell with two neurons to rub together uses C++ anymore?
I don't know. Then again I had my mandatory lobotomy when I started to professionally program in C++ 20 years ago (and still do to this day).
I agree that people still use C++, I just find it very difficult to imagine a C++ programmer I'd trust as much as the rust compiler. Hence my comment.
FWIW, I programmed C++ for 15 yearsāit's a useful tool, but it doesn't have much use anymore outside of legacy tooling, codebases, and developers who can't learn new things.
> I just find it very difficult to imagine a C++ programmer I'd trust as much as the rust compiler.
It's even more difficult to imagine a javascript programmer I'd trust more than any C++ compiler.
How is that relevant? Who is suggesting replacing c++ with javascript?
I've seen this come up here and elsewhere before, always very cool! I always wonder who's actually using it for production workloads, in what context, etc.
It feels like so much of the world focuses on docker images that alternatives are pretty hard to get going.
What's with the recommendation for a YouTube MP3 converter near the bottom? There seems to be no technological relation so I can only guess the author got paid to include it, but you're legally supposed to disclose if something is a paid ad
Is it a legal requirement? I thought it (disclaiming ads) was something one did to avoid the proverbial pitchforks and nothing more.
The FTC has guidance on when it considers a compensated endorsement to be "deceptive advertising", which is something they can legally enforce. [0]
[0] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/ftcs-endorse...
This seems like a farce. Most advertising in america is deceptive.
Edit: they seem to only enforce disclosure and they don't actually evaluate whether the ad is deceptive or not. Still this does seem to foreclose on the domain user in question's use of ads, if anyone cares
> If the advertiser doesnāt have proof that the endorserās experience represents what people will generally achieve using the product as described in the ad (for example, by just taking a pill daily for two months), an ad featuring that endorser must make clear to the audience what the generally expected results of following that same regimen are.
Pathetic and spineless. If this were actually enforced 99.99% of ad claims would be illegal.
> This seems like a farce. Most advertising in america is deceptive.
Yes, that's because many of the regulatory and consumer protection agencies are neutered by illegal businesses.
16 CFR Part 255 Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/press-re...
There is no such legal requirement whatsoever.
It's part of the terms of service of a number of social networks, I can almost see how someone might confuse that for the law. If I squint.
according to wayback machine the domain expired at the end of 2021. Months later it came back with the sneaky ad. Their page at github https://includeos.github.io/ does not have it. It is safe to assume whoever grabbed the domain has no association to the authors.
Project has been dead for many years now btw.
You're completely right. It's a squatter and he wants money. The project is not dead, however. It's currently used for research at University of Oslo, and I think we can expect much more activity in the coming years, such as ARM support.
I might add RISC-V support myself, as I am the author of libriscv. We'll see.
> You're completely right. It's a squatter and he wants money. The project is not dead, however. It's currently used for research at University of Oslo
If someone bought the domain and is re-using the same assets to put advertisements up then the author of includeos would have some real teeth in courts...
Yes, we have spoken to a lawyer and it is indeed the case. It still costs money, and we are not sure how to proceed yet, outside of removing links to the domain.
> Project has been dead for many years now btw.
Code doesn't die. Especially code targetting the c abi.
Is that a legal requirement where the owner of that website is?
I agree with you, that ad is placed in a odd place. It looks so out of place, I would believe it was copy-pasted there by mistake, if it weren't for the HTML link.
The members seem to mostly be from Norway and Norway has a law against "hidden" advertising, which I believe applies here.
We are indeed Norwegian! The domain is owned by a squatter now. He wants EUR 3000 to release it back to us. It's simply too much right now. So, I wish that this HN post could change from the squatter URL to GitHub instead.
@dang can change the URL to https://github.com/includeos/IncludeOS
This 2016 podcast discusses this in depth: https://cppcast.com/alfred-bratterud/
A game server could perhaps be another valid use case for this technology. A simple program, performance maximized, cost minimized.
Reminds me of Cosmopolitan C Compiler / Actually Portable Executables.
Sounds neat but very minimal:
> Node.js-style callback-based programming - everything happens in one efficient thread with no I/O blocking or unnecessary guest-side context switching.
> No race conditions. Delegated IRQ handling makes race conditions in āuserspaceā āimpossibleā. ā¦unless you implement threads yourself (you have the access) or we do.
Pretty cool way to turn x86es into embedded machines.
Checkout https://osdev.org
And actually, x86 started life as an embedded processor :)
Ah, much simpler than I anticipated. Thank you for sharing
For a similar embedded RTOS there is RTEMS https://www.rtems.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTEMS
An interesting example would be GRiSP where Erlang's BEAM was ported to an Arm Cortex M7 microcontroller with 64 MB of external RAM. https://www.grisp.org/
so is anyone actually using it?
Isn't this what's more typically called a unikernel?
EDIT: I see, their GH page actually uses this term, but this landing page does not.
There's almost no reason to do anything weird with operating systems today, because you can run Linux on a single core of your multi-core machine, and your app at full throttle (no context switching) on the remaining cores.
So for the cost of <1 core and a small amount of RAM>, you get full Linux, full debuggability, SSH, file systems, networking, etc. and your app still runs as fast as it can on the CPU.
Spend your innovation budget on your app, not the OS.
You get another layer of address space separation.
Then again, you can run a linux vm on one core and your unikernel app on the other cores on top of an hypervisor.
Amazing how we've come full circle. Type II hypervisors treat VM guests as processes, so is it any wonder we've developed ways to develop them as processes? A paravirtualized VM is just a process with a different (and arguably better) system call interface.
The distinction started with rings of protection which was orthogonal to processes. Roger Schell said the guy who designed the one for Intelās 286 had security kernels like GEMSOS in mind. Hereās GEMSOS and STOP so you can see how they did that back in the 1980ās:
https://www.cse.psu.edu/~trj1/cse443-s12/docs/ch6.pdf
Oh this is wildly cool! Do cloud providers like aws allow you to upload a custom system image to run as a vm?
Absolutely. Everyone who deploys unikernels to the public clouds does this. Some are better fits than others. AWS for instance you can build an image and deploy an ec2 instance in a matter of seconds.
My information is probably out of date but historically yes. Also historically operating systems other than Linux were pretty iffy.
I know you can run BSD on AWS for example.
Very cool.