Trustworthy Systems

Simplifying Microkit system composition with Acacia

Authors

Lesley Rossouw

    School of Computer Science and Engineering
    UNSW,
    Sydney 2052, Australia

Abstract

The seL4 Microkit has a problem: composing systems becomes very difficult when working with modular code or large code bases. The Microkit Acacia tool (formerly SDFgen) solves this problem by offering a higher-level abstraction for generating Microkit system files, capable of inserting modules with minimal effort. Acacia has been used extensively as a component of LionsOS and the seL4 Device Driver Framework (sDDF), simplifying integrating systems with multiple driver subsystems or high-level LionsOS components like filesystems or the firewall. Recently, Acacia has been re-implemented in Python for greater ease of use.

This talk will introduce the community to Acacia with a focus on newly added features which simplify build-time configuration and specification of large systems. We will cover the basics, starting with simply connecting a few programs together, and then demonstrate how to add subsystems such as sDDF driver stacks. We will conclude with a tutorial demonstrating how to convert freestanding work into a Acacia subsystem for future reuse, giving an overview of the architecture of the tool.

BibTeX Entry

  @misc{Rossouw_26:sel4s_acacia,
    author           = {Lesley Rossouw},
    location         = {Vancouver, BC, Canada},
    month            = sep,
    note             = {Talk at the 8th {seL4} {Summit}},
    title            = {Simplifying {Microkit} System Composition with {Acacia}},
    video            = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JK9P4k_08w},
    year             = {2026}
  }

Download