[Libre-soc-dev] QEMU Development Environment Image

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Tue, Sep 13, 2022 at 5:41 PM zemaye via Libre-soc-dev
<libre-soc-dev at lists.libre-soc.org> wrote:
>
> Hey guys,
>
> I have some spare time this week. Would anyone be interested in me putting together a nice QEMU dev image with all the goodies preinstalled on the preferred platform, Debian at whatever version the development branch is frozen on?

if by "image" you mean "a multi-gigabyte binary image that if hacked
could contain trojans and viruses and additionally would take up 30%
of server space each and result in overwhelming of the libre-soc's
allocated bandwidth"... sure, as long as you take full and complete
responsibility for its distribution and in no way claim that it is
associated with libre-soc in any way, shape, or form.

i pay for the server from my own personal finances' and mythicbeasts
have sponsored it.  dropping multi-gigabyte images *and maintaining them*
when you can just run a script and wait for a while, this is not really an
improvement, is it?

also, the absolute last thing we need is to become "an OS Support Centre".
more than that: i would consider it a reasonable filter that if
someone is unable
to follow instructions (or ask where they are), and unable to understand that
reproducible-build scripts and a common OS are a really important aspect
of stable software development and minimising mistakes, then, well, not being
funny but they're going to be a burden not a contributor, aren't they?

this is a small team: we're also under extremely tight deadlines right now.

this is the realities of project management, the world over.

> I could write up a QEMU quickstart tutorial to go along with it.

that would be real handy.  bear in mind that if you edit the
wiki or make any contribution we do need you to say (publicly)
if you are ok with the Libre-SOC Charter, https://libre-soc.org/charter/
apologies i cannot remember if you did that already?

> I think this is a good use of my time as I have already done all this
> and I've talked to at least one other potential contributor who has
> complained about the set-up process.

not here and not publicly they haven't

if they ask on the mailing list or on IRC they'll get help.
if they don't ask, then how can we possibly know??

sigh.  do clip them round the ear'ole for me :) sitting in
total isolation and silence gets you nowhere!

> I could maintain this as my sole task for now.

the tutorial would be great - it's installed automatically by
the devscripts - beyond that, there's the simulator / co-simulation
which sigh i haven't used in 18 months, your mileage may vary.

it was useful at the time, to get ISACaller up and running.

l.