Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH RFC 0/5] Split off mini-os to a separate tree

[Wei Liu <wei.liu2@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 10:57:57AM +0000, Anil Madhavapeddy wrote:
> On 26 Jan 2015, at 09:53, Thomas Leonard <talex5@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 
> > [ Cc += Anil ]
> > 
> > On 25 January 2015 at 18:25, Wei Liu <wei.liu2@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Cc Ian and Ian and some folks who might be interested in this work.
> >> 
> >> On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 06:13:41PM +0000, Wei Liu wrote:
> >>> There has been increasing use of mini-os in unikernel world and basically
> >>> everybody has their own fork of mini-os. That way going foward is going
> >>> to cause fragmentation of the community.
> >>> 
> >>> We would like to split off mini-os tree so that everybody can upstream 
> >>> their
> >>> changes and work on a common code base. Later I would also like to setup
> >>> a proper push gate for mini-os.
> >>> 
> >>> Stubdom's build environment is known to be very fragile, so basically all 
> >>> the
> >>> real work is done in top level Makefile.
> >>> 
> >>> I use following runes to split off mini-os:
> >>> 
> >>>  git filter-branch --tag-name-filter cat \
> >>>    --subdirectory-filter extras/mini-os/ -- --all
> >>> 
> >>>  # There is already a tag name 4.3.0-rc2 which points to the same commit.
> >>>  git tag -d xen-4.3.0-rc2
> >>> 
> >>>  # Add xen- prefix to all tags
> >>>  for t in `git tag`; do git tag "xen-$t" "$t"; git tag -d "$t" ; done
> >>> 
> >>>  git gc --aggressive
> >>> 
> >>> The tree can be found at:
> >>>  git://xenbits.xen.org/people/liuw/mini-os.git master
> >>> 
> >>> Note that mini-os cannot build on its own due to the limitation of it's 
> >>> own
> >>> build system. Splitting it off it's the first step towards fixing that 
> >>> problem
> > 
> > In case it's useful: for the standalone version of Mini-OS used by
> > Mirage, I had to include these directories too:
> > 
> > 1. xen/include/public
> > 2. xen/common/libfdt
> > 3. xen/include/xen/libfdt
> > 4. config
> > 
> > ( https://github.com/talex5/xen/tree/minios-releases )
> 
> It would be useful if the work to split out MiniOS could be done in
> the xen.git tree, so that it ends up building completely standalone
> and there's a final changeset in xen.git.
> 

I would rather take the other approach -- split out first than fix
problems as we go.

Splitting should be done sooner in the release cycle rather than later
IMHO.

> What's the planned release schedule for the new MiniOS?  Independent
> of Xen or initially coupled?
> 

My initial thought is that we should start coupled. Releasing
independently requires more man power than releasing coupled. Of course
the option to release independently is always available.

Wei.

> -anil

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