Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe try out kraft.cloud: we take Dockerfiles as input and automatically convert to lightweight VMs/unikernels when deploying (disclaimer: I'm one of the paper's authors and one of the people behind KraftCloud).
I recently built a similar thing for learning purposes using firecracker + the firecracker go api. I wrote a small init system in rust and combined that with filesystem images derived from the Debian, Ubuntu etc. container images (that can be extended with more layers). What really surprised me the most, is how quick and simple it is to compile the linux kernel. Cloned a tag with --depth 1, configured it and then it…
> I had heard multiple stories of how long that's supposed to take but it really doesn't.
It used to, but that's why they are only stories now.