Dear community,
I am very excited about the entire Genode project and looking
forward to the upcoming releases. Please keep up the quaterly
release cycle. Let me share my thoughts on several issues, which
have already been communicated:
- From a newbee's point of view I would say, that you guys are
heading into the right direction: I understand the core
component to be a kernel abstraction layer. Therfore ABI
stability of the core would be awsome - no matter what the
kernel is, you could use the same binaries (as long as you are
running on the same processor, of course) for drivers and
applications. That would be a prerequiste for a working
packaging system.
- The build process indeed needs a little make-over. I have
noticed side effects with the ports, which are hard to describe
in detail, as I have not yet fully understood them. Generally
speaking the ports (including the drivers) should be built
separately from the kernel/core/init. Once again - a stable ABI
would help. No matter what the kernel is, you would use the same
binaries for the drivers/applications.
- A dynamic init component would greatly help, too: reconfigure
your system, don't rebuild it. This would also enhance the
turmvilla scenario.
Let me also add an idea of mine: for your turmvilla scenaria it
might help to provide .iso images with a running system (e.g. using
grub-mkrescue) and make them accessible for download. You would then
use dd to copy the image on a USB pendrive or an SD card and reboot
your computer from this external storage device without installing
it on your internal hard drive. You could also use this mechanism to
install the system on your internal hard drive, if you have the
capability to dynamicly resize your partitions, but you wouldn't
have to. The way I see it, a dynamic init component would be a
prerequisite.
To say it with the words of Karl Valentin: everything has been
said - just not by everyone.
All the best, Florian.