Google's Summer of Code 2008 / GRUB 2

Google's Summer of Code 2008 / GRUB 2

[Vesa Jääskeläinen]

Hi all!

I am happy to announce that we have received two slots for GRUB 2 
projects as a part of GNU Project:

http://code.google.com/soc/2008/gnu/about.html

We want to welcome both Colin and Marco to be part of GRUB 2!

We received several good applications but unfortunate we couldn't have 
all. Some of you have been selected for other projects and we wish you 
luck with your projects. I hope we can work with you all in the future!

- The Mentors

Re: Google's Summer of Code 2008 / GRUB 2

[Colin D Bennett]

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On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:06 +0300
Vesa Jääskeläinen <chaac@nic.fi> wrote:
> We want to welcome both Colin and Marco to be part of GRUB 2!

Hi,
I'm going to be working on the "Fancy Menus" feature for GRUB 2.

Once I begin producing real code, I will have my Bazaar VCS
development branch available on my web site for anyone interested, as
well as periodic tarballs. I'll use the GRUB 2 wiki to document the
design and implementation as things move forward.

Currently I am getting familiar with the GRUB codebase and design. I'm
going to try to get GRUB 2 booting in QEMU so I can get faster feedback
during development.

Best Regards,
Colin

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Re: Google's Summer of Code 2008 / GRUB 2

[Pavel Roskin]

On Mon, 2008-04-21 at 17:39 -0700, Colin D Bennett wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:06 +0300
> Vesa Jääskeläinen <chaac@nic.fi> wrote:
> > We want to welcome both Colin and Marco to be part of GRUB 2!
> 
> Hi,
> I'm going to be working on the "Fancy Menus" feature for GRUB 2.
> 
> Once I begin producing real code, I will have my Bazaar VCS
> development branch available on my web site for anyone interested, as
> well as periodic tarballs. I'll use the GRUB 2 wiki to document the
> design and implementation as things move forward.

Just in case, there is a git mirror of the repository, updated every 2
hours.  More information here: http://repo.or.cz/w/grub2.git

> Currently I am getting familiar with the GRUB codebase and design. I'm
> going to try to get GRUB 2 booting in QEMU so I can get faster feedback
> during development.

./autogen.sh && ./configure && make -j2
./grub-mkrescue --pkglibdir=. --grub-mkimage=./grub-mkimage grub.iso
qemu -cdrom grub.iso

That will make a bootable CD image using only files from the source
directory and boot it in qemu.  You may need to use the --overlay option
to grub-mkrescue to include fonts, the menu, the fancy stuff etc :-)

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin

Re: Google's Summer of Code 2008 / GRUB 2

[Robert Millan]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 05:39:36PM -0700, Colin D Bennett wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:06 +0300
> Vesa Jääskeläinen <chaac@nic.fi> wrote:
> > We want to welcome both Colin and Marco to be part of GRUB 2!
> 
> Hi,
> I'm going to be working on the "Fancy Menus" feature for GRUB 2.
> 
> Once I begin producing real code, I will have my Bazaar VCS
> development branch available on my web site for anyone interested, as
> well as periodic tarballs. I'll use the GRUB 2 wiki to document the
> design and implementation as things move forward.
> 
> Currently I am getting familiar with the GRUB codebase and design. I'm
> going to try to get GRUB 2 booting in QEMU so I can get faster feedback
> during development.

Hi Colin,

Welcome on-board, I hope you enjoy the stay.  Happy hacking :-)

-- 
Robert Millan

"The technological evasion of the license is as unacceptable as the
 legal evasion of the license [...].  That's the provision in section
 1 regarding keys. [...]  We say one thing: when you sell somebody a
 home... give him the keys"  -- Eben Moglen on GPLv3

Re: Google's Summer of Code 2008 / GRUB 2

[Marco Gerards]

Hi,

Vesa Jääskeläinen <chaac@nic.fi> writes:

> I am happy to announce that we have received two slots for GRUB 2
> projects as a part of GNU Project:
>
> http://code.google.com/soc/2008/gnu/about.html
>
> We want to welcome both Colin and Marco to be part of GRUB 2!

Thanks for welcoming me to the project ;-)

First of all, the code.  I think it would be a good idea if I would
send in patches for my code so it will be immediately integrated into
GRUB 2.  This would work as everyone will make sure that this code
will not be touched by anyone and patches to this will be ignored.
Otherwise I can work in a branch, my own bzr repository or whatever.
I hope I will get feedback on this :-)

As for time, this is something I mentioned to the mentors of the GNU
project.  I will start by working myself through all the USB
specifications and books I can find.  This is a *LOT* of
documentation.  Besides that, I am working on my master thesis now.
So I cannot say how much code will be produced for July, but as you
know I have no problems with working a lot and will spit out plenty of
code in July.

Related to this, I had very little time last months (this is not
related to me working on GRUB 2 as student, but as regular
developer).  I will go over the list next week, so if something is
important, please point me to it.

There are other students working on USB (for other projects), perhaps
I should contact them at some point.

If someone wants to know anything about my project, feel free to
contact me at any time!  The abstract can be found on the gsoc
website, so you can see what I will and won't do.

--
Marco

Re: Google's Summer of Code 2008 / GRUB 2

[Colin D Bennett]

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Hi Marco,
Nice to meet you!

On Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:47:36 +0200
Marco Gerards <mgerards@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> First of all, the code.  I think it would be a good idea if I would
> send in patches for my code so it will be immediately integrated into
> GRUB 2.  This would work as everyone will make sure that this code
> will not be touched by anyone and patches to this will be ignored.
> Otherwise I can work in a branch, my own bzr repository or whatever.
> I hope I will get feedback on this :-)

I'm going to be using bzr for my personal development work. Currently I
am using 'tailor' to synchronize my local bzr "upstream GRUB 2" branch
from CVS. It seems to work fairly well. If you want more info on
setting up tailor, let me know and I can send you my config file
(really simple, actually).

Pavel Roskin posted a link yesterday to his git mirror of the GRUB CVS.
(http://repo.or.cz/w/grub2.git) That would be another option, and I
need to consider whether I should mirror directly from CVS or via the
git mirror. Interfacing bzr to git is a more direct mapping since they
both have the concept of changesets (revisions of the entire
repository). There is a bzr-git tool (https://launchpad.net/bzr-git)
that is supposed to integrate with git in a really slick way. I might
go straight to CVS, though, since the git repository is just a mirror
itself.

Something else you might find useful is the 'loom' plugin for Bazaar.
It helps you manage sets of patches against an upstream branch of a
project.

Regards,
Colin

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Re: Google's Summer of Code 2008 / GRUB 2

[Vesa Jääskeläinen]

Marco Gerards wrote:
> Vesa Jääskeläinen <chaac@nic.fi> writes:
>> We want to welcome both Colin and Marco to be part of GRUB 2!
> 
> Thanks for welcoming me to the project ;-)

You looked like needing that :)

> First of all, the code.  I think it would be a good idea if I would
> send in patches for my code so it will be immediately integrated into
> GRUB 2.  This would work as everyone will make sure that this code
> will not be touched by anyone and patches to this will be ignored.
> Otherwise I can work in a branch, my own bzr repository or whatever.
> I hope I will get feedback on this :-)

Please remember that after GSoC coding period is over you have to upload 
your code to Google Code as per:

12. Student uploads completed code to a Google Code hosted project.

http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_program_works

> There are other students working on USB (for other projects), perhaps
> I should contact them at some point.

I think there is special student only mailing list related to GSoC so 
perhaps you can communicate there? Unless of course you want to discuss 
this publicly :)

Thanks,
Vesa Jääskeläinen

Re: Google's Summer of Code 2008 / GRUB 2

[Marco Gerards]

Vesa Jääskeläinen <chaac@nic.fi> writes:

> Marco Gerards wrote:
>> Vesa Jääskeläinen <chaac@nic.fi> writes:
>>> We want to welcome both Colin and Marco to be part of GRUB 2!
>>
>> Thanks for welcoming me to the project ;-)
>
> You looked like needing that :)

:-)

>> First of all, the code.  I think it would be a good idea if I would
>> send in patches for my code so it will be immediately integrated into
>> GRUB 2.  This would work as everyone will make sure that this code
>> will not be touched by anyone and patches to this will be ignored.
>> Otherwise I can work in a branch, my own bzr repository or whatever.
>> I hope I will get feedback on this :-)
>
> Please remember that after GSoC coding period is over you have to
> upload your code to Google Code as per:
>
> 12. Student uploads completed code to a Google Code hosted project.
>
> http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_program_works

Yes, I know.  All I upload has to be my code.  But working in CVS is
not a problem, as long as nobody touches my code.  Otherwise I have to
keep it separate and merge at the end of the project.  So I can post
small pieces of code and merge often, or merge at once at the end.
What is preferred?

>> There are other students working on USB (for other projects), perhaps
>> I should contact them at some point.
>
> I think there is special student only mailing list related to GSoC so
> perhaps you can communicate there? Unless of course you want to
> discuss this publicly :)

I will see :-)

--
Marco

Re: Google's Summer of Code 2008 / GRUB 2

[Vesa Jääskeläinen]

Marco Gerards wrote:
> Vesa Jääskeläinen <chaac@nic.fi> writes:
>>> First of all, the code.  I think it would be a good idea if I would
>>> send in patches for my code so it will be immediately integrated into
>>> GRUB 2.  This would work as everyone will make sure that this code
>>> will not be touched by anyone and patches to this will be ignored.
>>> Otherwise I can work in a branch, my own bzr repository or whatever.
>>> I hope I will get feedback on this :-)
>> Please remember that after GSoC coding period is over you have to
>> upload your code to Google Code as per:
>>
>> 12. Student uploads completed code to a Google Code hosted project.
>>
>> http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2008/faqs.html#0.1_program_works
> 
> Yes, I know.  All I upload has to be my code.  But working in CVS is
> not a problem, as long as nobody touches my code.  Otherwise I have to
> keep it separate and merge at the end of the project.  So I can post
> small pieces of code and merge often, or merge at once at the end.
> What is preferred?

Although we have people that would like to test out your code while in 
development, lets keep it clean for every party what is yours and what 
is not. So use git, bzr, or what ever tool and try to keep in sync with 
HEAD. In meanwhile you can provide patches or tarballs of your build if 
people want to test it out.

When GSoC is completed then we will merge your code. Anyway, I think it 
will be quite isolated in yours case.

And also what Robert said about stability...

Thanks,
Vesa Jääskeläinen

Re: Google's Summer of Code 2008 / GRUB 2

[Robert Millan]

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 11:47:36AM +0200, Marco Gerards wrote:
> 
> First of all, the code.  I think it would be a good idea if I would
> send in patches for my code so it will be immediately integrated into
> GRUB 2.

I'd prefer if the GSoC stuff was merged at the end of summer, or at least
when it is fully functional.

My concern is not as mentor but as Debian maintainer.  We're trying to
stabilize for a release currently;  major reorganization of the code
without enough timeframe to stabilize will force us to branch quite early,
which I'd rather avoid if possible.

Thanks for considering ;-)

-- 
Robert Millan

"The technological evasion of the license is as unacceptable as the
 legal evasion of the license [...].  That's the provision in section
 1 regarding keys. [...]  We say one thing: when you sell somebody a
 home... give him the keys"  -- Eben Moglen on GPLv3