Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 01:15:57 -0700 From: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@mittelstaedt.us> To: freebsd-emulation@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Future direction of virtualbox-ose port on FreeBSD Message-ID: <4DA6AD3D.7040607@mittelstaedt.us> In-Reply-To: <bf0bde98729c30ff9b3dedc121049354@bluelife.at> References: <bf0bde98729c30ff9b3dedc121049354@bluelife.at>
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On 4/13/2011 4:38 AM, Bernhard Froehlich wrote: > Hi VirtualBox users. > > I'm sending this because there are a few problems in how we currently > maintain the emulators/virtualbox-ose ports on FreeBSD. I want to > outline my main concerns and propose a better way to solve that. > > The VirtualBox port is already very critical for many users and very > complex at the same time so it gets harder and harder to update the port > to new major versions without getting too much negative feedback from > users. In the past we did a call for testers when upstream released a > new major version (3.1.0, 3.2.0, 4.0.0) and got the update in the tree > after their first patch release (3.1.2, 3.2.2) but now for the 4.0 > release cycle we need at least to wait for 4.0.6 to get a useable state. > > Because of this long delay more and more people are using the cft and > our development ports. We do not want that average users use that ports > just to get to a newer version because they contain additional risks and > are usually unstable versions (no support, irregular updates, broken > ...). But we also do not want to make it harder for our testers to > provide feedback because your feedback is very valuable to us and we > need each tester we have. > > So we currently have these problems: > 1) we need a stable version around if you hit a problem at the new > version > 2) we need to get new major versions out earlier to testers > 3) we need to attract more testers > > > We could solve this problems with "unstable" ports and people can use > them if they care about it but we don't have that infrastructure in > FreeBSD yet. We could also create -devel ports but that only solves one > part of the problem and generates an huge amount of work on our side. > Our internal -devel ports are most of the time built with "trunk" code > so more or less alpha quality code. So that's not going to fly either. > > > Instead we came up with two improvements: > 1) Before a major version hits the tree we do a repocopy with the > current version. So in case you have a problem with the major version > you can fallback to the old version. It will be marked DEPRECATED with > the next major update and removed 2 months after that. Major updates for > vbox are 3.1.x, 3.2.x, 4.0.x > > 2) We provide binary packages and PBIs for virtualbox when we do a Call > for Testers and probably also on a regular basis to lower the burden to > test it. That only works for FreeBSD releases because the kernel module > needs to be build for a specific kernel. So if you use a STABLE kernel > you won't benefit from that. > > That means for us that we can bring in a new major version a bit > earlier than now but we will continue to do extensive testing first. So > you will still not see a .0 release in the ports. > > > What do you think about it? Any better ideas? > I vote for binary releases for the testers. From a test standpoint there is a huge benefit for you guys to have everyone running the same build, built the same way. Currently FreeBSD development snapshots are released binary, this isn't much different. Granted you may have some testers with weird systems setup that won't like it, but they can always keep the last RELEASE kernel around and boot their system on it temporarily for testing purposes only. Anyone running vbox in production is very likely NOT testing on their production servers. Ideally they are imaging their production boxes and booting the image on a spare box and testing on that - so worrying about fallback is kind of pointless - if the new version doesn't work, then they don't need to fall back to a prior one. Ted > > Your VirtualBox on FreeBSD Team, > decke@, bapt@, (i. a. beat@) >
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