Decentralizing VM development (was Re: [Vm-dev] Re: 64 bit VM, source anyone?)

[goran at krampe.se]

Hi!

Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:
> I'd be interested in having a single repository host both VMMaker  
> sources and platform code. Maybe it even needs to host a VMMaker  
> image.

I agree, or we could do like we do in Gjallar - we have a script that
builds the base Gjallar image using Keith's Installer etc. This means we
could keep the VMMaker MC snapshot and the script inside Mercurial and
then just rig a make script that sucks down a vanilla base image, builds
a VMMaker image using the script and the VMMaker snapshot - and hey, we
could even instrument VMMaker so that it can be run headless and produce
the source code.

> It's unbelievably hard to reproduce an official VM from first  
> principles, let alone doing serious VM development on your own in a  
> way that can be easily integrated back into the main line by the  
> maintainers. We must find a way that lets them evaluate and integrate  
> proposed changes without much effort. The current setup requires too  
> much energy on both maintainers and developers, leading to stagnation.
> 
> The official maintainers carry a great responsibility, if something  
> breaks, *they* are going to get blamed. So they are conservative, for  
> a good reason. Other developers are maintaining their own VMs,  
> without being able to effectively share. A de-centralized environment  
> with a pull model a la Mercurial or git could help this a lot, as it  
> allows independent development as well as easy cherry-picking for the  
> official versions.

Hear, hear. I will try to get the time to set up an SVN mirror (hgsvn or
Tailor) to begin with - then setup another repo and play with David's
recipe. 

> - Bert -

regards, Göran