Re: [Xen-devel] build suggestion

[Ian Pratt <Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> What if the Makefile looped through all config-* files found in
> install/boot and built a kernel based on each config? That way you could
> mix and match kernel versions simply by having prepared configs, eg
> 2.6.8.1-xen0, 2.6.8.1-xenU, 2.4.27-xenU.

I'd certainly like to nuke the LINUX_RELEASE mechanism and have a
list of image types that should be built e.g. 
"linux-2.4 linux-2.6 netbsd-2.0 freebsd".

For each of these, I guess we could see whether there are
appropriate config file(s) present in install/boot and then loop
building them all. If there are no suitable config files, it
could generate some defaults.  However, this scheme wouldn't deal
with applying different patches to each kernel.

We'd certainly welcome suggestions (and patches!) as to how to
improve the build process and better integrate with building
deb/rpm packages. However, we should avoid "over-automization":
it should still be straightforward for someone who's familiar
with running 'make xconfig' and customising their own Linux
kernel to still do so.

I haven't had a chance to look at Brian's working in building deb
packages, but is there stuff here which we should be pulling into
the top-level makefile?

> Also, whatever happened to the windows XP port?

The existing windows XP port was done within the University using
windows source code, which has meant that even binaries of the
port can only be released to people that have signed the same
source licence. Since there wasn't any likelihood of a more
general release of Xen-XP being possible, we haven't kept the
port up to date with current releases of Xen.

We'd obviously like to get XP running on Xen in a form that can
be generally released, and are looking into a number of
options. We hope to add Xen support for the forthcoming Intel VT
hardware extensions, which we believe should enable Xen to
support vanilla unmodified operating systems images.  Even with
the extra hardware support, there'll still be an inevitable
performance penalty of not doing proper para-virtualisation, but
at least it will enable legacy images to be supported. We'd hope
that all new OS installationss would use kernels containing
para-virtualised extensions. 

Ian


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