I’ve only tested this on Linux and the Intel architecture. You need to have qemu-system-x86 installed, and your computer should allow you to use the Linux kernel kvm module.

Install

To use Ambient, you need to install the ambient executable. For now, the only supported way is by building from source, using the Rust toolchain:

• cargo install ambient-ci

This installs the latest release from crates.io.

Get virtual machine image

Download a virtual machine image, and unpack it.

curl https://files.liw.fi/ambient/ambient.qcow2.xz | unxz > ambient.qcow2

Create a projects file

Create a file projects.yaml with the following content:

projects:
  demo:
    image: /scratch/ambient-images/ambient-boot.qcow2
    source: /scratch/demo
    plan:
      - action: shell
        shell: |
          echo hello, world

Create a configuration file

Create ~/.config/ambient/config.yaml with the following content:

tmpdir: /scratch/tmp
log: /scratch/ambient.log
target: _ewww@webby:/srv/http
dput_target: apt.liw.fi
run_ci: /usr/bin/run-ci
cpus: 4
memory: 8G
cache_max_size: 10G
state: /scratch/ambient-state

Adjust as needed.

Run CI

AMBIENT_LOG=info ambient ambient.yaml

Read the log file from the location specified in the configuration file.