Very interesting!
FYI, other operating systems in Haskell:
House, 2005: https://programatica.cs.pdx.edu//House/
HalVM, 2008: https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM
also
HalNS network stack 2011: https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2011-May/092...
In Writing an OS in HaskellGaloisInc
HaLVM
Haskell2012–2026
GaloisInc / HaLVM · Archived
HaLVM
The Haskell Lightweight Virtual Machine (HaLVM): GHC running on Xen
21Distinct people
25Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.1KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
The Haskell Lightweight Virtual Machine (HaLVM): GHC running on Xen
GitHub
Where it is used
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
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Mentions over time
HN mentions by year25 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2012-08-17 17:20:30 UTC to 2026-03-29 21:13:17 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
The Haskell Lightweight Virtual Machine (HALVM) Source Archive
The HaLVM is (C) 2008 Galois, Inc., and distributed under a standard,
three-clause BSD license. Please see the file LICENSE, distributed with
this software, for specific terms and conditions.
What is the HaLVM?
The Haskell Lightweight Virtual Machine, or HaLVM, is a port of the Glasgow
Haskell Compiler toolsuite to enable developers to write high-level, lightweight
virtual machines that can run directly on the Xen hypervisor.
While Galois initially designed the HaLVM to allow for quick and easy
prototyping of operating systems components, the HaLVM has grown over time to
allow for a much wider variety of use cases. When connected with the appropriate
libraries, the HaLVM can, for example, operate as a network appliance.
Writing for the Haskell Lightweight Virtual Machine is just like writing
normal Haskell, and many pure Haskell libraries port to the HaLVM with little
or no difficulty. In fact, we include the standard
Haskell Cabal toolset in order to more easily
facilitate the integration of outside Haskell libraries. However, instead of
running on top of a typical operating system, HaLVM programs run at a very low
level, directly on the Xen hypervisor. This allows for very lightweight, single
purpose Xen domains with minimal resource requirements.
Getting and Building the HaLVM
For those who want to set up a development environment and maybe contribute to HaLVM, please see HACKING.md.
In addition, you might want to check out Darrin Eden's build system,
available on GitHub:
https://github.com/dje/halvm-test
It may provide some information that you'd find useful, or may automate portions of this process for you.
Where To Look Next
The HaLVM comes with a number of examples / test cases, located in the folder
examples. We suggest taking a look at these to see a wide variety of HaLVM
programs you might use as a starting point.
Further information about using the HaLVM is available on the HaLVM wiki.
Developers interested in improving the HaLVM should also take a look at the
current list of HaLVM bugs, and submit any new feature requests to the
HaLVM bug system.
How To Contact Us
The HaLVM is a proud member of the unikernel.org
community. If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments about the HaLVM,
we suggest participation in devel.unikernel.org,
a multi-unikernel developer's message board.
If you have bugs you would like to file or patches you'd like to send, we'd
strongly prefer you utilize GitHub's interfaces for both these functions. Please
see GitHub for more information.
That's all, and enjoy using the HaLVM!
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
25 sourcesAnother one is HalVM [0], for Haskell. Unfortunately it's not maintained anymore.
[0] https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM
In Mirage – A programming framework for building type-safe, modular systemsHaskell: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_(operating_system)
Haskell: https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM
OCaml: https://mirage.io/
ML: http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/47545
Lisp: In the 1970s and 1980s there were Lisp Machines with the OS written in Lisp. Too many sources to link here, they are often discussed on HN. They were marketed in the 1980s by Symbolics, LMI, and Xerox.
Also in the 1970s and 1980s there were computers running Smalltalk standalone - in effect, an OS in Smalltalk. They provided introspection.
In Ask HN: Operating Systems built with functional languages?Haskell Lightweight Virtual Machine: GHC Running on Xen
3 points · Open discussionFunny how you mentioned unikernel. There's a Haskell unikernel whose development began more than a decade ago: https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM
In Linear types are merged in GHCI'm interested that they didn't list the "old" reason people thought unikernels could be more secure. That is that they could be small enough to be completely written in higher languages. With something like https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM you could bring to bear formal methods in more straight forward ways.
This of course left the host still needing to be secured using traditional approaches but that surface area was smaller.
I'd buy that you can't list that in an article about why all unikernels are already secure, but that seemed to be the heart of the pitch to me when I first started hearing it.
In Unikernels are secure> you'd expect to see high-quality operating system kernels
The Haskell community is smaller than others but there are numerous highquality projects, including kernel/OS level projects that you don't mention:
HaLVM, Haskell Unikernels - https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM
The specification model of the sel4 microkernel - https://github.com/seL4/l4v/tree/master/spec/haskell
There are many smaller examples of OS projects in Haskell, but for better examples of production systems you only have to look to areas requiring high assurance such as finance, where a number of large companies use Haskell and other functional languages. (BoA, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Standard Chartered, etc.)
It's true that there a lot of Haskell blogs focused on research level Category theory, but the concepts there don't need to be used or understood for high quality
Read the rest
, production ready code. I'm actually not a Haskell guy, and very much of the mindset that you should use the right tool for the job, but being dismissive of languages with unique features such as being lazy by default is shortsighted.
On the most basic level, you should be able to write a simple operating system from scratch. I heard http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/ is good for an introduction to OS writing.
Some papers I read in no particular order:
Synthesis OS (http://valerieaurora.org/synthesis/SynthesisOS/) might be interesting for you. They do lots of runtime code synthesis.
Exokernels (follow links from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exokernel#Bibliography). And more recently Mirage (https://mirage.io/) and HaLVm (https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM)
(I assume you already know how to program. Otherwise, brush up on that as step 0. C is still the canonical choice for OS work. But if you are feeling adventurous there's more choice.)
In The cost of a system call [pdf]Congrats! This is quite interesting and I look forward to seeing the site. Have you come across CyberChaff [1]? It seems like you may have similar goals. CyberChaff makes use of HaLVM [2] so this approach (using unikernels) seems like it might suit you too.
I've put together a website to help gather the unikernel projects [3], so if you choose to consider this approach for your next round of work, please do share your experiences there!
[1] https://galois.com/project/cyberchaff/
[2] https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM
[3] http://unikernel.org
In Ask HN: New Year's resolution – What projects are you planning to start in 2016?I was looking into some of this myself already; really helpful article and amazing results. Another interesting approach is to compile Haskell with HaLVM[1] in to a unikernel that can run on a Xen hypervisor. But this is a non-posix environment on which Haskell's "network" package does not compile. No "network" means that it is currently impossible[2] for WAI (Haskell's standard interface between web servers and applications), but also db libraries, to run in such an environment.
With going unikernel with Haskell still being a little steep (but definitely on my wish list), then the next-best would be a mini VM/container image. And 5MB sure is mini!
Once again, thanks FPComplete!
1: https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM
2: https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM/issues/43
In Haskell Web Server in a 5MB Docker ImageInteresting, reminds me of HaLVM (Haskell on Xen) and Mirage OS (OCaml):
- https://github.com/galoisinc/halvm
- http://www.openmirage.org/
In Python without an operating systemSee also https://github.com/galoisinc/halvm and http://openmirage.org
In OSv, a new operating system for the cloudHaLVM is similar sort of project which uses the Haskell VM.
https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM
In OS Technologies to WatchThey're of course not a desktop option at all, but there's also some very interesting work happening with unikernels, which are really only recently a viable option now that Xen can present a unified hardware layer, instead of the endless treadmill of specific drivers. I've been getting into OpenMirage [1] quite a bit recently, largely due to the energy of the team [2], but also looked a bit at HalVM [3]. I definitely recommend [2] for anyone interested in plausible ideas of what the one of the next generations of VM/apps might look like.
[1] http://www.openmirage.org/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjonFD-2ATo or http://www.se-radio.net/2014/05/episode-204-anil-madhavapedd... (audio only)
[3] https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM
In Rob Pike: Reflections on Window Systems (2008) [video]for Haskell, there's HaLVM: https://github.com/GaloisInc/HaLVM
for Erlang, there's ErlangOnXen: http://try.erlangonxen.org/zerg
There are others, if you care to search for them.
In My First UnikernelShowing the 15 most recent of 25 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.