Virtme-ng: Expediting Kernel Development and Testing

Explore the innovative virtme-ng tool for expediting kernel development in this 53-minute conference talk from Kernel Recipes 2024. Dive into the tool's combination of QEMU/KVM, microVM, virtio-fs, and overlayfs technologies to enable rapid kernel testing. Learn how virtme-ng creates a virtualized copy-on-write live snapshot of a running system, allowing developers to "fork" a live system with a new kernel for safe, sandboxed testing. Discover the tool's performance benefits, comparable to native host execution, and its ability to eliminate the need for dedicated testing systems. Gain insights into virtme-ng's growing adoption in kernel projects' CI/CD infrastructure, including netdev, sched-ext, and Mutter. Understand the tool's internals and learn how to integrate it into CI/CD workflows for faster kernel testing, potentially benefiting your own kernel development projects.