[oi-dev] OI project reboot required

[Andrzej Szeszo]

The process you have described sounds a lot like OI's original plan. It
didn't work out. There was too much baggage. No one was willing to spend
time learning it. It was just too ... ugly.

Individual gates provide some semi-automated ways of building things. I
don't know anyone who managed to automate them all though. No one was able
to provide equivalent of "make world" to build complete OI to date.

There is no doubt Martin Bochnig has a lot of expertise in putting
operating systems together. I got impression that he was heavily invested
in SVR4 based systems though. OI may not be an interesting project for him
as it will probably remain IPS based for the time being.

Andrzej


On 9 May 2013 11:53, Jim Klimov <jimklimov at cos.ru> wrote:

> On 2013-05-09 10:01, Andrzej Szeszo wrote:
>
>> Hi All
>>
>> (Instead of replying to a message in one of the other threads
>> I thought I will create a new one.)
>>
>> Just wanted to say that I don't see a future for the project in its
>> current form. There is simply too many packages and too much baggage for
>> a handful of people to look after.
>>
>> I think the project needs a new vision and a reboot. If you have any
>> ideas for the project and can write scripts/makefiles to generate a
>> distro/live CDs/etc. - speak up! You don't have to be a leader if you
>> don't want to :)
>>
>
>
> You're probably right. I would like to help, though have limited time
> lately, and without docs similar to "Building illumos" won't really
> know where to start beside the illumos-gate. I guess many potential
> and active contributors are in the same boat.
>
> I think it would be proper to maintain a page (hosted on OI wiki)
> with copies of notes, caveats and other informational snippets about
> building the OI distro components. We have many talented people who
> can turn that knowledge into more polished narrative text, scripts
> and makefiles, paragraph at a time - but too few people who know
> what should actually be done (the content to polish). After all, you
> know how many man-months were invested into untangling this know-how
> from sources, comments, ARCs and whatnot. Please share the result :)
>
> I might guess that Martin Bochnig, who made the SPARC port last year
> single-handedly (and SVR4 backport at the same time), might also be
> quite in the know of the intricacies for the build. Possibly, he is
> now the only single person that knows it all. His contribution of the
> distro building know-how would be just as invaluable as the resulting
> distribution itself ;)
>
> Recently, it was noted that there is no equivalent for a "make world"
> in OI. I do believe that after years of development, each consolidation
> in the distro has some equivalent command to build it, as well as a
> specified build environment (such as CBE, or just particular GCC/SS12u1,
> perl, Python and other tool-chain tool versions). The consolidations
> would likely be built each with its own "make sub-world", thus a global
> "make world" for OI would run a dozen make's for the sub-worlds...
> Right? :)
>
> The build environments could be made in zones, and provisioning of
> those can be easily scripted (I think I might help in that direction).
> The build could be executed by i.e. logging in from GZ into the zones
> (or somehow harnessing the dmake's distributed properties natively,
> or by automating with CI/Hudson and its ssh-login capabilities onto
> many hosts with pieces of the code puzzle), culminating with a call to
> the distro constructor. This is all a job for a master makefile to be
> called in the GZ, and waiting a few days for it to complete.
>
> Quite possibly, the "master-builder" automations (scripts to provision
> standardized build zones, compilation environments on top of them, and
> local package servers for resulting packages accumulated from those
> zones, etc.) - these scripts and makefiles would deserve a repository
> of their own, even if just a small one for starters. This way people
> would be able to install OI (or real iron or in a VM), fetch a script
> to provision build zones, download/update source codes, clone the
> per-bug workspace, etc. all in the same standardized and well-tested
> manner, and easily start helping the project move on in whatever way
> they can.
>
> //Jim Klimov
>
>
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