[oi-dev] Building OpenIndiana

Thu May 9 07:51:08 UTC 2013

G B: There are some build instructions on the wiki. I also put some notes
together here https://gist.github.com/aszeszo/2855864 when building and
rebuilding upstream repositories as an experiment. Note that the repos
referenced in the gist were not synced with upstream in almost a year.
Build commands should apply to OI repos on hg.openindiana.org though.

Andrzej

On 8 May 2013 01:11, Alasdair Lumsden <alasdairrr at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Basically there is nobody left working on the project that I know of apart
> from Jon Tibble (Meths on irc), who doesn't seem to respond on the mailing
> lists much, and Milan Jurik who was working on a JDS update. Neither Jon
> nor Milan have opted to take on leadership status from what I know, so this
> whole project is a "ghost project" - there's a website, a wiki, a download
> page, and a package server, but there isn't really anyone here except a few
> caretakers who occasionally trim the hedges and mow the lawn but mostly
> keeps to themselves.
>
> There isn't really any single document describing how to "build" OI - it's
> not an easy task. Under Sun, OpenSolaris was built from a collection of
> consolidations, a consolidation being a logical grouping of software, and
> OI inherited this. For example there was:
>
> onnv-gate: Kernel + Core Userland. This is what illumos is today - they
> forked the last open release of onnv-gate, onnv_147.
>
> sfw-gate: Sun Freeware - collection of open source utilities. Uses GNU
> Makefiles for building. Like a poor implementation of FreeBSD ports/pkgsrc.
>
> userland-gate: A replacement for SFW, with a tidier better IPS-ized build
> system. Also uses GNU Makefiles. Similar to FreeBSD ports tree or pkgsrc.
> oi-build is a clone of userland-gate, and we wanted oi-build to take over
> from all the other consolidations.
>
> xnv-gate: The X.Org consolidation, maintained at Oracle by Alan
> Coopersmith.
>
> pkg-gate: The IPS software consolidation.
>
> vpanels: The visual panels thing.
>
> Caiman: The installer.
>
> JDS: The Java Desktop system, based on spec-files technology. Also known
> as the "gnome" consolidation as it's where gnome lives. Also contains
> Firefox/Thunderbird/Evolution/etc.
>
> g11n: The internationalisation consolidation with localisation
> text/strings for apps
>
> admin/sic_team/solaris_re/etc - Misc other stuff.
>
> You can see the various consolidation source repos here:
>
> https://hg.openindiana.org/
>
> Under Sun, each consolidation was managed by a whole team, many of which
> were in different geographical locations. As far as I know, JDS was done by
> Sun India, pkg-gate by staff in Ireland. Each consolidation uses different
> build systems, each with their own pros and cons, but all requiring quite a
> lot of domain specific knowledge, with very little documentation provided
> to get started.
>
> Every 2 weeks these consolidations would be delivered to the Solaris
> Release Engineering team, who would assemble things together to put out a
> release. Some of the consolidations produce IPS package repos, some of them
> produce bundles of SVR4 packages which have to be converted to IPS packages
> using the distro_import utility. Then everything has to be merged together,
> then distro-constructor would be run to spit out the installable ISO image.
>
> So you can see, we're talking about a major engineering effort for each
> release. Sun had loads of staff, so it wasn't an issue. OI however had a
> small number of volunteers, such as myself, Andrzej Szeszo, Albert Lee, Jon
> Tibble, etc. We put in an extraordinarily large amount of hours to figure
> out how it all worked, it took months and months of scratching our heads
> and hacking away to get stuff to build, and a big push to get the first OI
> release done, oi_147, and then the subsequent releases oi_148 and oi_151.
>
> I had a grand plan to try to unify all the separate consolidations into
> what I considered the "best" one, userland-gate, under the name oi-build. I
> didn't get very far. Nexenta wanted to ditch using the Debian userland in
> favour of something native, so asked to collaborate with us on oi-build, so
> it got renamed -illumos-userland. However politics, infighting and a
> general lack of communication/direction/sanity within Nexenta led to it
> being stillborn. People got frustrated, bored, and lost interest, including
> myself. Then I quit, and almost everyone else seems to be working on other
> things now.
>
> So we're left with a dead project, apart from the work Jon Tibble is doing
> to periodically update oi_151 with a new illumos-gate release, along with
> some package updates and fixes as he finds time.
>
> If you want to "build OI", you need to understand that there is no single
> way to build the whole OS, there is no equivalent of, for example,
> FreeBSD's "make buildworld". Each consolidation would have to be built
> separately, then merged with distro_import.
>
> If you just want to update a single package, you could identify what
> consolidation the software you want to update lives in (which you can see
> in the packages metadata, for example "set
> name=org.opensolaris.consolidation value=gnome" indicates the JDS
> consolidation). Then build that consolidation (or just the package in
> question). But if any other software depends on what you're updating, you
> have to rebuild it, and that often crosses consolidation boundaries.
>
> If I had more time and motivation I still think it would be worth sorting
> the OI mess out, but time and motivation are in very short supply. I
> started OI because our business used OpenSolaris and we needed a follow on
> OS to use after Oracle discontinued releases. But then Joyent released
> SmartOS, which is designed for cloud computing, so we use that - it would
> be stupid not to. There was then no requirement for me to continue working
> on OI.
>
> OmniTI decided that the mess Sun left behind with OpenSolaris was too
> horrific to even contemplate working with so created their OS from scratch.I think it would have been beneficial for illumos to have a strong general
> purpose OS with a good desktop, such as OI, but most of the ex-Sun
> engineers were very hostile to our effort. I think they shot themselves in
> the foot by not giving us more support. But other desktop distros based on
> illumos are emerging, such as Tribblix, so natural selection will take its
> course.
>
> I don't personally see a bright future for OI unless a smart, committed
> new leader steps up and drums up renewed excitement for sorting everything
> out. Jon and Milan might do micro-updates, but unless they or other people
> step up to work on all the other areas of the project, such as drumming up
> interest, marketing, PR, helping new developers on board, it's never going
> to get very far.
>
> Alasdair
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> oi-dev mailing list
> oi-dev at openindiana.org
> http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/oi-dev
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://openindiana.org/pipermail/oi-dev/attachments/20130509/482ba747/attachment-0005.html>