51 lines
2.3 KiB
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51 lines
2.3 KiB
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---
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title: Technology behind robur
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author: someone
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abstract: some abstract
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---
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We develop digital infrastructure with a small footprint. This is in stark
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contrast with other approaches that try to patch general purpose operating
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systems by adding more layers of indirection.
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Each piece of digital infrastructure (or service) is (a) written in a high-level
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memory-safe programming language and (b) specialised to only contain the
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required functionality at compilation time. This (a) reduces the attack vectors
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and (b) drastically reduces the attack surface.
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The resulting service is executed as a virtual machine on any modern hypervisor.
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Its size is usually two orders of magnitude smaller (ranging from kilobytes to
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16 megabytes) than a UNIX, it boots within milliseconds.
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As programming language we use [OCaml](https://ocaml.org), a multi-paradigm
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programming language, which unifies functional, imperative, and object-oriented
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programming. OCaml has an expressive static type system, and type inference. A
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developer can specify complex invariants in the type system, which are
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checked at compile time, and violations are caught early.
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We discuss more reasons why we use OCaml [further down](#Why-OCaml).
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## MirageOS
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[MirageOS](https://mirage.io) started as a research project at the University
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of Cambridge in 2009.
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## Why OCaml
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OCaml code can be very fast (our TLS implementation reaches up to
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85% of the throughput of OpenSSL), and compiles either to native code on various
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architectures or to bytecode. It can even compile to JavaScript. OCaml is
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memory managed, individual developers don't have to manually allocate and
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release memory (which is a common source of security issues in other operating
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systems).
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In 2016, Facebook developed [reason](https://reasonml.github.io/), a dialect of
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OCaml which syntax is closer to JavaScript, and easier to comprehend for
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beginners. Reason and OCaml code can be easily combined in a single
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application, since the same compiler is used.
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Links:
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- [OCaml for the masses](http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2038036)
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- [Why OCaml (from realworldocaml)](https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/prologue.html)
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- [Replacing Python with OCaml in 0install](http://roscidus.com/blog/blog/2013/06/09/choosing-a-python-replacement-for-0install/)
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- [Why tezos uses OCaml](https://www.tezos.com/static/papers/position_paper.pdf)
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