virt-fwk - Rust bindings for Apple's Virtualization Framework

virt-fwk exposes a safe set of API's unlocking the capabilities of Apple's Virtualization.framework in rust. To explain Virtualization.framework I refer to the following quote directly from Apple's documentation.

The Virtualization framework provides high-level APIs for creating and managing virtual machines (VM) on Apple silicon and Intel-based Mac computers. Use this framework to boot and run macOS or Linux-based operating systems in custom environments that you define. The framework supports the Virtual I/O Device (VIRTIO) specification, which defines standard interfaces for many device types, including network, socket, serial port, storage, entropy, and memory-balloon devices.

Requirements.

This is still very much work in progress. As such the library is currently only with the latest macOS and Rust versions:

• Higher or equal to macOS Ventura (13).
• Lates version of rust 1.69.0, although it's very likely that earlier versions will work as well. Only the latest version has been tested.

Getting started

Add the following lines to your Cargo.toml file or run cargo add virt-fwk.

[dependencies]
virt-fw = "0.1.0"

Use the following if you prefer to use the package via the global vz module name. This allows you to use the package in a similar fashion as to how the vz golang library works:

[dependencies]
vz = { package="virt-fwk", version="0.1.0" }

Important

In order to use the macOS virtualization api's your program should have the com.apple.security.virtualization entitlement. To add this create an entitlements file with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>com.apple.security.virtualization</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

And then sign you program with this entitlement using the following command:

$ codesign --entitlements <FILENAME>.entitlements -s - <YOUR BINARY PATH>

If you want to use VZBridgedNetworkDeviceAttachment, you need to add also com.apple.vm.networking entitlement.