Dave Scott's Blog

Docker Desktop has always run containers inside a minimal, purpose-built VM.

How important is upstreaming that patch?

An interactive 3D Gaussian splat viewer showing a scene reconstructed from a photo using Apple's ml-sharp library.

Thoughts on Unikernels, after our 2013 paper ("Unikernels: Library Operating Systems for the Cloud") won one of the Influential Paper Awards at the 2025 ASPLOS conference.

A deep dive into where data is stored in Docker containers, and how we could reclaim space using an OCaml qcow2 disk defragmentor

A deep dive into the architecture of network switches, featuring an interactive 3D visualization of CLOS networks, inspired by Sandy Fraser's approach to designing large-scale switches.

Improved networking performance, faster builds, lower memory usage and a "Resource Saver" mode.

Support for Wasm, better support for Rust, startup is much faster and there's a new UI to show builds.

Lots of people have been asking us about the removal of a component called "dockershim" from upstream Kubernetes and how this will affect Docker Desktop.

All about the Unikernel-inspired userspace networking stack that connects containers to the outside world in Docker Desktop.

An appleinsider post by Malcolm Owen based on my screenshot of an early Docker Desktop build running on Apple Silicon.

A deep-dive into how the logging system works, joint work with Magnus Skjegstad

We replaced a complex SMB/CIFS based implementation with a FUSE+VSOCK-based one, to increase reliability and performance.

Discusses time sync between the LinuxKit VM and the host.

Tips for reducing disk space usage in Docker for Mac by understanding and using TRIM.

Apple's release notes for macOS Sierra 10.12, which includes a fix for CVE-2016-4739 affecting mDNSResponder, joint work with Magnus Skjegstad and Anil Madhavapeddy.

Describing how XenServer development benefits from the new OCaml package manager, OPAM.

A high-level overview of the "xapi toolstack" which supports clusters, shared storage with live migration, HA etc.

Xenstore is a critical component needed by hosts running the Xen hypervisor.

Experimental packages which added support for libvirt and Ceph to XenServer.

Using MirageOS to harden a critical service called "xenstore", required by the Xen hypervisor.