Mentorship Session: Speeding Up Kernel Development With virtme-ng

Mentor: Andrea Righi, Principal Software Engineer, NVIDIA
A significant portion of kernel development time is usually dedicated to testing and debugging kernels, a process that can be frustratingly slow.
Unlike user-space applications, where a fast edit/compile/test cycle is common, kernel testing requires deploying a test system (either bare-metal or VM), installing the recompiled kernel, running tests, collecting results, and then repeating the process. Bugs can further delay this process, often requiring reboots or even system redeployments.
virtme-ng aims to provide a standardized way for kernel developers to expedite the edit/compile/test cycle. It leverages QEMU/KVM, virtiofs, and overlayfs to boot a recompiled kernel (or any kernel image) inside a virtualized copy-on-write (CoW) live snapshot of the current system.
This approach allows developers to simply "fork" their system with a new kernel, creating a secure sandbox for testing that offers performance close to native execution, without the need for dedicated testing systems.
In this webinar, we will demonstrate how to use virtme-ng for rapid kernel testing and debugging, with practical examples and common kernel development scenarios.