Re: linux distribution ?

[Tim Post <echo@echoreply.us>]

On Thu, 2009-05-21 at 05:53 -0400, Dulloor wrote:
> Keir et al -
> 
> I am on ubuntu and every time I upgrade my distro (dom-0), I end up
> spending half-a-day getting xen working again, like this time on
> moving to jaunty/karmic (problem booting 2.6.18 based xen and then
> python version).
> 
> Which distro do the xensource guys use for their development ? All I
> am interested in is xen development/test environment.
> 
> -dulloor

You might consider just building Xen from source (tools and hypervisor),
which takes it completely out of the scope of your package manager.

I know that is taboo in some circles, however it gives you greater
flexibility when upgrading, while also giving you the ability to test
experimental patches.

The problem is, doing this often violates enterprise warranties. 99.9%
of the time, I'd rather just trust my distro when it comes to packages.

When it comes to Xen, I usually recommend (and install) the latest
faithful official release. The one and only time I just used distro
packages was with Ubuntu Hardy (LTS) .. and that was chaotic (time going
backwards, etc).

There was once a universal installer script .. can that be resurrected
and possibly rely on m4 being present for developers? Using that, the
user knows with no uncertainty exactly what they are missing (and what
version is needed).

For instance, a dependency on 32 bit stubs when building on x86_64.

It does not have to be named ./configure, it does not have to create
makefiles and I am happy to maintain it. The drawback is 6k+ lines of
generated shell code that has to be tracked in the hg.

It could be ... scripts/checkbuildconfig .. or whatever. It would not be
a configuration tool, just a diagnostic tool that offers hints on what
is needed to build.

Why clutter the Makefile needlessly? A script would be more portable,
anyway.

This approach has solved this exact problem for decades.

Cheers,
--Tim