Application Development and Porting

Porting an application to Unikraft should be for the most part relatively painless given that the available Unikraft libraries provide all of the application’s dependencies. In most cases, the porting effort requires no changes (or in the worst case small patches) to the actual application code. At a high level, most of the work consists of creating a Unikraft makefile callled that Unikraft uses to compile the application’s source code (i.e., generally we avoid using an application’s native Makefile(s), if any, and rely on Unikraft’s build system to build the necessary objects with correct and compatible compiler and linker flags).

In greater detail, in order for an application to work with Unikraft you need to provide at least the following three files:

  • Makefile: Used to specify where the main Unikraft repo is with respect to the application’s repo, as well as repos for any external libraries the application needs to use.
  • The main Makefile used to specify which sources to build (and optionally where to fetch them from), include paths, flags and any application-specific targets.
  • A Kconfig-like snippet used to populate Unikraft’s menu with application-specific options.

The Makefile is generally short and simple and might remind you to Linux kernel modules that are built off-tree. For most applications the Makefile should contain no more than the following:

UK_ROOT ?= $(PWD)/../../unikraft
UK_LIBS ?= $(PWD)/../../unikraft-libs
LIBS := $(UK_LIBS)/lib1:$(UK_LIBS)/lib2:$(UK_LIBS)/libN

        @make -C $(UK_ROOT) A=$(PWD) L=$(LIBS)

        @make -C $(UK_ROOT) A=$(PWD) L=$(LIBS) $(MAKECMDGOALS)

We cover the format of the other two files in turn next, followed by an explanation of the build process.

Unikraft’s configuration system is based on Linux’s KConfig system. With you define possible configurations for your application and define dependencies to other libraries. This file is included by Unikraft to render the menu-based configuration, and to load and store configurations (aka .config). Each setting that is defined in this file will be globally populated as set variable for all file, as defined macro in your source code when you use "#include <uk/config.h>". Please ensure that all settings are properly name spaced. They should begin with [APPNAME]_ (e.g., APPHELLOWORLD_). Please also not that some variable names are predefined for each application or library name space (see

We recommend as current best practice to begin the file with defining dependencies with an invisible boolean option that is set to y:

### Invisible option for dependencies
      default y
      # dependencies with `select`:
      select LIBNOLIBC if !HAVE_LIBC
      select LIB1
      select LIB2

In this example, LIB1 and LIB2 would been enabled (the user can’t unselect them). Additionally, if the user did not provide and select any libc the Unikraft internal replacement libnolibc would be selected. Of course you could also directly define a dependency on a particular libc (e.g., libnewlib), instead. You can also depend on feature flags (like HAVE_LIBC) to provide or hide options. The feature flag HAVE_LIBC in this example is set as soon as a proper and full-fledged libc was selected by the user. You can get an overview of available feature flags in libs/

Any other setting of your application can be a type of boolean, int, or string. You are even able to define dropdown-selections. You can find a documentation of the syntax at the Linux kernel tree: Please note that Unikraft does not have tristates (the m option is not available).

### App configuration
      bool "Boolean Option 1"
      default y
        Help text of Option 1

The Unikraft build system provides a number of functions and macros to make it easier to write the file. Also, please ensure that all variables that you define begin with APP[NAME]_ (e.g., APPHELLOWORLD_) so that they are properly namespaced.

The first thing to do is to call the Unikraft addlib function to register the application with the system (note the letters “lib”: everything in Unikraft is ultimately a library). This function call will also populate APPNAME_BASE (containing the directory path to the application sources) and APPNAME_BUILD (containing the directory path to the application’s build directory):

$(eval $(call addlib,appname))

where name would be replaced by your application’s name. In case your main application code should be downloaded as archive from a remote server, the next step is to set up a variable to point to a URL with the application sources (or objects, or pre-linked libraries, see further below) - if required. and to call Unikraft’s fetch command to download and uncompress those sources (APPNAME_ORIGIN is populated containing the directory path to the extracted files)

$(eval $(call fetch,appname,$(APPNAME_URL)))

Next we set up a call to use Unikraft’s patch functionality. Even if you don’t have any patches yet, it’s good to have this set up in case you need it later:

$(eval $(call patch,appname,$(APPNAME_PATCHDIR),$(APPNAME_ZIPNAME)))

With all of this in place, you can already start testing things out:

make menuconfig
[choose appropriate options and save configuration, see user's guide]

You should see Unikraft downloading your sources, uncompressing them and doing the same plus building for any libraries you might have specified in the Makefile or through the menu (there’ll be nothing to build for your application yet as we haven’t yet specified any sources to build). When building, Unikraft creates a build directory and places all temporary and object files under it; the application’s sources are placed under build/origin/[tarballname]/.

To tell Unikraft which source files to build we add files to the APPNAME_SRCS-y variable:

APPNAME_SRCS-y += $(APPNAME_BASE)/path_to_src/myfile.c

For source files, Unikraft so far supports C (.c), C++ (.cc) and assembly files (.S).

In case you have pre-compiled object files, you could add them with (but due to possible incompatible compilation flags of your pre-compiled object files, you should handle this with care):

APPNAME_OBJS-y += $(APPNAME_BASE)/path_to_src/myobj.o

You can also use APPNAME_OBJS-y to add pre-built libraries (as .o or .a):

APPNAME_OBJS-y += $(APPNAME_BASE)/path_to_lib/mylib.a

Once you have specified all of your source files (and optionally binary files) it is generally also necessary to specify include paths and compile flags:

# Include paths
APPNAME_ASINCLUDES  += -I$(APPNAME_BASE)/path_to_include/include [for assembly files]
APPNAME_CINCLUDES   += -I$(APPNAME_BASE)/path_to_include/include [for C files]
APPNAME_CXXINCLUDES += -I$(APPNAME_BASE)/path_to_include/include [for C++ files]

# Flags for application sources
APPNAME_ASFLAGS-y   += -DFLAG_NAME1 ... -DFLAG_NAMEN [for assembly files]
APPNAME_CFLAGS-y    += -DFLAG_NAME1 ... -DFLAG_NAMEN [for C files]

With all of this in place, you can save, and type make. Assuming that the chosen Unikraft libraries provide all of the support that your application needs, Unikraft should compile and link everything together, and output one image per target platform specified in the menu.

In addition to all the functionality mentioned, applications might need to perform a number of additional tasks after the sources are downloaded and decompressed but before the compilation takes place (e.g., run a configure script or a custom script that generates source code from source files). To support this, Unikraft provides a “prepare” variable which you can set to a temporary marker file and from there to a target in your file. For example:

$(APPNAME_BUILD)/.prepared: [dependencies to further targets]
       cmd && $(TOUCH) $@


In this way, you ensure that cmd is run before any compilation takes place. If you use fetch, add $(APPNAME_BUILD)/.origin as dependency. If you used patch then add $(APPNAME_BUILD)/.patched instead.

Further, you may find it necessary to specify compile flags or includes only for a specific source file. Unikraft supports this through the following syntax:

APPNAME_SRCS-y += $(APPNAME_BASE)/filename.c

It is also be possible compile a single source files multiple times with different flags. For this case, Unikore supports variants:


Finally, you may also need to provide “glue” code, for instance to implement the main() function that Unikraft expects you to implement by calling your application’s main or init routines. As a rule of thumb, we suggest to place any such files in the application’s main directory (APPNAME_BASE), and any includes they may depend on under APPNAME_BASE/include. And of course don’t forget to add the source files and include path to

To see full examples of files you can browse the available external applications or library repos.

Reserved variable names in the name scope are so far:

APPNAME_BASE                              - Path to source base
APPNAME_BUILD                             - Path to target build dir
APPNAME_ORIGIN                            - Path to extracted archive
                                            (when fetch or unarchive was used)
APPNAME_CLEAN APPNAME_CLEAN-y             - List of files to clean additional
                                            on make clean
APPNAME_SRCS APPNAME_SRCS-y               - List of source files to be
APPNAME_OBJS APPNAME_OBJS-y               - List of object files to be linked
                                            for the library
APPNAME_OBJCFLAGS APPNAME_OBJCFLAGS-y     - link flags (e.g., define symbols
                                            as internal)
APPNAME_CFLAGS APPNAME_CFLAGS-y           - Flags for C files of the library
APPNAME_CXXFLAGS APPNAME_CXXFLAGS-y       - Flags for C++ files of the library
APPNAME_ASFLAGS APPNAME_ASFLAGS-y         - Flags for assembly files of the
APPNAME_CINCLUDES APPNAME_CINCLUDES-y     - Includes for C files of the
APPNAME_ASINCLUDES APPNAME_ASINCLUDES-y   - Includes for assembly files of
                                            the library
APPNAME_FILENAME_FLAGS                    - Flags for a *specific* source file
APPNAME_FILENAME_FLAGS-y                    of the library (not exposed to its
APPNAME_FILENAME_INCLUDES                 - Includes for a *specific* source
APPNAME_FILENAME_INCLUDES-y                 file of the library (not exposed
                                            to its variants)
APPNAME_FILENAME_VARIANT_FLAGS            - Flags for a *specific* source file
APPNAME_FILENAME_VARIANT_FLAGS-y            and variant of the library
APPNAME_FILENAME_VARIANT_INCLUDES         - Includes for a *specific* source
APPNAME_FILENAME_VARIANT_INCLUDES-y         file and variant of the library

Make Targets

Unikraft provides a number of make targets to help you in porting and developing applications and libraries. You can see a listing of them by typiing make help; for convenience they’re also listed here below:

clean-[LIBNAME]        - delete all files created by build for a single library
                         (e.g., clean-libfdt)
clean                  - delete all files created by build for all libraries
                         but keep fetched files
properclean            - delete build directory
distclean              - delete build directory and configurations (including .config)

* all                  - build everything (default target)
images                 - build kernel images for selected platforms
libs                   - build libraries and objects
[LIBNAME]              - build a single library
objs                   - build objects only
prepare                - run preparation steps
fetch                  - fetch, extract, and patch remote code

* menuconfig           - interactive curses-based configurator
                         (default target when no config exists)
nconfig                - interactive ncurses-based configurator
xconfig                - interactive Qt-based configurator
gconfig                - interactive GTK-based configurator
oldconfig              - resolve any unresolved symbols in .config
silentoldconfig        - Same as oldconfig, but quietly, additionally update deps
olddefconfig           - Same as silentoldconfig but sets new symbols to their default value
randconfig             - New config with random answer to all options
defconfig              - New config with default answer to all options
                           UK_DEFCONFIG, if set, is used as input
savedefconfig          - Save current config to UK_DEFCONFIG (minimal config)
allyesconfig           - New config where all options are accepted with yes
allnoconfig            - New config where all options are answered with no

print-version          - print Unikraft version
print-libs             - print library names enabled for build
print-objs             - print object file names enabled for build
print-srcs             - print source file names enabled for build
print-vars             - prints all the variables currently defined in Makefile
make V=0|1             - 0 => quiet build (default), 1 => verbose build

Patch Creation

To create a patch, go to the base directory for your sources and run the diff command below. If you’ll be using Unikraft’s built-in patch command make sure to place patches in the LIBLIBNAME_BASE/patches directory. For the patch’s name, as a convention, we use the format [nnn]-[dash-separated-description].patch (e.g., 001-ipv6-on.patch). Putting all of this together, the following command creates a Unikraft patch:

diff -Uanm /path_to_file/source.c.orig /path_to_file/source.c >