Re: NetBSD port and a couple of remarks

[Christian Limpach <chris@pin.lu>]

> Out of interest, how many man hours do you think it took you? I'm
> very impressed you managed to figure the Xen i/f out on your own
> without any help from Keir and the rest of us.

I think I spent 8-10 hours each day between 1/11 and 1/20 and after that it
was more sporadic, another 10 on 1/22 and about 4 each on 1/25 and 1/27.
I'd think between 95 and 120 hours total.  I also noted some milestones:
- 1/11/2004: started with linux/mini-os install/experimentation
- 1/12/2004: add mini-os startup to NetBSD startup and make it load/start
- 1/12/2004: add arch/xeno tree
- 1/14/2004: add minimal console output support
- 1/17/2004: add timer event processing
- 1/17/2004: started work on xennet network driver
- 1/18/2004: pmap pd/pt/pa/ma cleanup
- 1/19/2004: hardclock call from timer event works
- 1/20/2004: boot init until cnopen over nfs
- 1/22/2004: add console device
- 1/22/2004: integrate Xen events into NetBSD interrupt system
- 1/25/2004: add npx support
- 1/27/2004: multi-user boot over nfs

I spend quite some time figuring out how some of the i386 cpu features
actually work (pagetable/GDT/LDT/TSS), how they are used in NetBSD and how
to rewrite using the Xen hypercalls.

> There's been a few fixes and improvements for the hypervisor i/f
> in the 1.2 tree, but I don't think it will take long to forward
> port NetBSD.
>
> We'll investigate your specific bug reports.

Good!

> > I hope to commit this to the NetBSD tree eventually.  Or I'll make
patches
> > available after some cleaning up.
>
> Great! We'd be very pleased to put the patches in the xen
> distribution in the meantime, as soon as you're ready.

Thanks.  I'll probably have a patch ready in a few days and I'll also know
if/how it gets into the NetBSD tree.

> There's a pretty recent src/binary tar ball in:
> www.cl.cam.ac.uk/netos/xen/downloads/xeno-1.2.tar.gz
>
> It's still in the form of a BK repository, but all of the files
> are checked out.

Thanks!

> BTW: I offered to buy dinner for anyone that did an OS port. I
> hope you'll take me up on that offer...

Oh, excellent! ;-)

    christian



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