What is kvm_play?

The project kvm_play is a small Rust-based codebase for experimenting with KVM, the built-in virtualization technology in the Linux kernel. Essentially, it lets a program create and run a lightweight virtual machine directly, without needing a full operating system installed inside it. At a high level, KVM turns the Linux kernel itself into a "hypervisor", the software layer that manages virtual machines. This repo contains Rust code that talks to KVM's interface to set up a virtual CPU, allocate memory, load a tiny program into that memory, and then tell the virtual CPU to run it. It's a hands-on way to see how virtualization works at a low level, using Rust's safety and performance features instead of the C language that is traditional for this kind of work. This kind of project is aimed at developers who want to understand or build custom virtualization tooling, think of someone building a specialized sandbox for running untrusted code, a custom emulator, or a testing environment for low-level software. It's not an end-user app, it's a learning tool or starting point for engineers exploring how to run code in isolation using hardware acceleration. Beyond that, the README doesn't go into detail, it's empty, so there's no documentation on specific usage instructions, supported platforms, or design choices. Anyone interested would need to read the Rust source itself to understand what the code actually does and how to run it.