[Soc-coordination] kFreeBSD deliverables

[Luca Favatella]

Hi.


I am starting with the list of deliverables
(from the "Deliverables" and "Project schedule" sections of the proposal)

1) debootstrap
2) understand how Ging works
3) understand how old installer (hacked sysinstall) works
4) port debian-installer (d-i)
5) (optionally) port Debian Live


Following is the status of each task.

----
Point 1 (debootstrap)

When Debian GNU/kFreeBSD entered the archive, plain debootstrap
sufficed, and worked when all needed packages were built.
(So the work I did on this before the community bonding period [0] was
useless for GNU/kFreeBSD.)

----
Points 2 & 3 (Ging, old installer)

Done before the community bonding period.

I didn't manage to make Ging [1] completing the boot sequence, but
these two points were useful to understand
* FreeBSD boot process
* how to workaround QEMU DMA bugs

----
Point 4 (d-i)

This point represents most of the project.

I managed to port d-i on GNU/kFreeBSD (kfreebsd-i386), making it less
Linux dependant in some places.

I achieved
* d-i booting with FreeBSD kernel
* network configuration
* udeb downloading and installation
* disk partitioning
* base system installation
* bootable installed system

I used some short term solutions, i.e.
* skipping keyboard layout selection
* using "ifconfig" and "route" from freebsd-net-tools-udeb [2] instead
of "ip" from BusyBox

The kfreebsd branch [4] of d-i is in good shape, and only differs from
trunk because of
* kfreebsd short term solutions
* linux specific organization of trunk (pkg-list)

During the proposal phase I had no experience in d-i hacking, so I
didn't know about the (big) BusyBox and GNU Parted dependencies (more
details below).

----
Point 5 (optionally Debian Live)

Not done.
This was optional and listed as deliverable if failing d-i port (as
described in the "Project schedule" section).

----
Tasks not covered by the original list:

Porting of a minimal (i.e. no network options) BusyBox 1.13 to GNU/kFreeBSD.
A couple of patches are already upstream, while others [5] need to be
merged into the Debian package and/or upstream.

Porting current GNU Parted to GNU/kFreeBSD.
Some patches are already in the Debian package, others [6] need
testing on FreeBSD and merging upstream.



Cheers,
Luca Favatella



[0] http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2009/03/msg00341.html
[1] http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/glibc-bsd/trunk/web/ging/
[2] http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/d-i/people/slackydeb/kfreebsd/d-i/dhclient-script.udeb?view=log
[3] http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/d-i/people/slackydeb/kfreebsd/d-i/freebsd-net-tools-udeb.diff?view=log
[4] http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/d-i/branches/d-i/kfreebsd/
[5] http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/d-i/people/slackydeb/kfreebsd/busybox/1.13/debian/
[6] http://svn.debian.org/viewsvn/d-i/people/slackydeb/kfreebsd/d-i/parted/unstable/