2026-02-02 –, Atlantis
Building multi-component images (a host image plus "guests") has been discussed for several years, and many different types of one-off or custom solutions exist. However, for various reasons—including reproducibility, tool lock-in, licensing, root user requirements, and namespace issues—these solutions are not officially supported by meta-virtualization. Providing a solution that all container runtimes within meta-virtualization can use has been a stated goal.
Significant development on this front has occurred in meta-virtualization over the past two releases. This talk will discuss these efforts, their current status, and plans to complete and extend the work in 2026. The presentation will demonstrate how pre-built containers can be leveraged, deployed, and expanded to provide robust and complete solutions. Opportunities to create a general-purpose multi-layer image specification in OECore will also be discussed, along with image bundling options for hypervisors.
Bruce has been working professionally with Linux since 2000, and a user since
1995. He currently works as a Principal Systems Engineer for AMD, spending
time as maintainer for the Yocto project reference kernel, meta-virtualization
and meta-cloud-service slayers. Although most of Bruce's effort is spent in the
kernel and virtualization, his experience ranges from build systems and shell
scripting, to userspace and graphics toolkits. Bruce has spoken at ELC in the
past, at internal conferences/showcases and technology presentations to smaller
audiences.