Re: [Autotest] [RFC] KVM test: Ship rss.exe and finish.exe binaries with KVM test

[Uri Lublin <uril@redhat.com>]

On 02/03/2010 04:25 PM, Michael Goldish wrote:
>
> ----- "Uri Lublin"<uril@redhat.com>  wrote:
>
>> On 02/02/2010 01:48 PM, Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues wrote:
>>> Hi folks:
>>>
>>> We're on an effort of streamlining the KVM test experience, by
>> choosing
>>> sane defaults and helper scripts that can overcome the initial
>> barrier
>>> with getting the KVM test running. On one of the conversations I've
>> had
>>> today, we came up with the idea of shipping the compiled windows
>>> programs rss.exe and finish.exe, needed for windows hosts testing.
>>>
>>> Even though rss.exe and finish.exe can be compiled in a fairly
>>> straightforward way using the awesome cross compiling environment
>> with
>>> mingw, there are some obvious limitations to it:
>>>
>>> 1) The cross compiling environment is only available for fedora>=
>> 11.
>>> No other distros I know have it.
>>>
>>> 2) Sometimes it might take time for the user to realize he/she has
>> to
>>> compile the source code under unattended/ folder, and how to do it.
>>>
>>> That person would take a couple of failed attempts scratching
>> his/her
>>> head thinking "what the heck is this deps/finish.exe they're
>> talking
>>> about?". Surely documentation can help, and I am looking at making
>> the
>>> documentation on how to do it more easily discoverable.
>>>
>>> That said, shipping the binaries would make the life of those
>> people
>>> easier, and anyway the binaries work pretty well across all versions
>> of
>>> windows from winxp to win7, they are self contained, with no
>> external
>>> dependencies (they all use the standard win32 API).
>>>
>>> 3) That said we also need a script that can build the entire
>>> winutils.iso without making the user to spend way too much time
>> figuring
>>> out how to do it. I want to work on such a script on the next days.
>>>
>>> So, what are your opinions? Should we ship the binaries or pursue a
>>> script that can build those for the user as soon as the (yet to be
>>> integrated) get_started.py script runs? Remember that the later
>> might
>>> mean users of RHEL<= 5.X and debian like will be left out in the
>> cold.
>>
>> 4) Another option is to make winutils.iso available (somewhere on the
>> web), and
>> download it in get_started.py (similar to other iso images used by kvm
>> test).
>
> But isn't there a legal problem with that?
> winutils.iso contains VLC media player (for the timedrift test).
> If there's no legal problem, this sounds like the best option to me.

You may be right (although I think VLC is GPL).
I meant only for rss.exe and finish.exe.
Other components such as VLC media player can be downloaded separately.