Re: Feedback on my development setup

["Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2024 at 11:39:59AM -0500, Bilbao, Carlos wrote:
> 
> If I may offer a suggestion, focusing on documenting the challenges you've
> encountered with KVM, etc., could be more valuable that trying to cover
> everything.

Many people have their own scripts for building and testing kernels.
Very often those scripts tend to be specialized for a particular use
case, or development workflow, and trying to enshrine it as _the_ way
to develop kernels may not all that helpful.

For example, my preferred workflow, and the one which I recommend to
people who want to contribute to my file system, will build kernels
which can then be used to run tests using either kvm/qemu, Google
Compute Engine, or on Android devices.  It's also a bit more turn-key
that the instructions that you've given which is both a plus and a
minus.  On the plus side, it means much easier to get started, and
they don't have to cut and paste expect scripts, and manually edit
kernel config files.  On the minus side, because a lot of the steps
are automated, people don't have as much of an opportunity to learn
about what various kernel config options mean.

If you're interested, documentation for my scripts can be found here:

https://github.com/tytso/xfstests-bld/blob/master/Documentation/kvm-quickstart.md
https://github.com/tytso/xfstests-bld/blob/master/Documentation/kvm-xfstests.md
https://thunk.org/gce-xfstests

The short version is after you've downloaded the git tree, installed
the binaries via "make install", and installed some package
dependencies, setting up a kernel config which is suitable for KVM, a
GCE VM, or Android, is done via:

	install-kconfig

Then building a kernel is done via:

	kbuild

And then running said kernel under KVM is done via:

	kvm-xfstests shell

Or if you want to run a file system smoke test:

	kvm-xfstests smoke

It was designed so that even graduate students who have no interest in
kernel development other than getting their FAST academic paper
published, can use it to test their research file systems, hopefully
helping them to understand the gulf that can sometimes exist between
research prototypes and production file systems.  :-)

	       	      	      	    - Ted