Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC] Future goals for autotest and virtualization tests

[Anthony Liguori]

On 03/08/2012 09:19 AM, Lucas Meneghel Rodrigues wrote:
> Before I forget, I'd like to ask you about this:
>
> On 03/08/2012 10:36 AM, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> > I'm really not a fan of buildroot. Note that in order to ship binaries,
> > full source needs to be provided in order to comply with the GPL. The
> > FSF at least states that referring to another website for source that's
> > not under your control doesn't satisfy the requirements of the GPL.
>
> About using buildroot, what is up with it, since it is mature and works well?
> You mentioned than providing all the sources is harder than it looks like, and I
> surely think this might be the case.

buildroot is a full blown distribution.  But instead of distributing binaries, 
it only distributes source code.  Think of it like Gentoo--.

It relies on third party links to fetch said source code which means that it's 
not unusual at all for buildroot to straight out fail.  Because it needs a GCC 
that can build shared libraries, it also requires rebuilding GCC which increases 
the build time even for a minimalistic configuration.

Having a JeOS it not meant to replace having proper guests (like Fedora or 
Ubuntu).  As I've said in other notes, the point of having a JeOS is to 
essentially use Linux as a libOS when writing unit tests.

> But in all my naiveness, if the problem is to ship the exact source with the
> images have been built, couldn't I just ask buildroot to fetch all the tarball
> sources (there's a function to perform source download only) and add them to the
> appropriate git branch?

Okay, let's say I'm a developer and I want to use a new Linux kernel to test the 
new virtio-pci feature I added with buildroot.  Where do I begin?  What patch do 
I submit?

That's the use case I'm trying to go after.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori