Dev Tools / Utilities

While most tasks in the OpenVMM repo can be accomplished directly via standard Rust tooling (i.e: cargo run, cargo build), there are many dev tasks that don't neatly fall under the cargo umbrella. e.g:

• running code formatters / linters
• orchestrating multi-stage, multi-component OpenHCL builds
• running different kinds of test suites
• building/downloading test images for VMM testing
• setting up git hooks
• etc...

The following chapter discusses some of the various dev-facing tools / utilities you may encounter and/or find useful when working on OpenVMM.

Rust-based Tooling

As with many projects, OpenVMM initially took the simple approach of spinning up ad-hoc Bash/Python scripts, and hand-written YAML workflow automation.

This worked for a while... but as the project continued to grow, our once small and focused set of scripts evolved into a mass of interconnected dependencies, magic strings, and global variables!

To pay down mounting tech debt, and to foster a culture where all devs are empowered to contribute and maintain OpenVMM's project tooling, we have adopted a policy of migrating as much core tooling away from loosely-typed languages (like Bash, Python, and hand-written Workflow YAML), and towards new strongly-typed Rust-based tooling.