Setting up build environment (Neil Spring)

Options

You have many options in how to set up your build environment for 412. For your success, ensure that you can edit, build, and test via keystrokes. Your iterative development must be faster than a commit/checkout cycle, remote copy operation, reboot of a virtual machine, etc. Your beloved windows-based editor may cause you more trouble than it's worth if you cannot jump quickly locations identified by compiler errors.

Option 1: Use a Mac. It's what I use. It takes some setup to get the cross compiler working.
Option 2: Install Linux. It could take a day. Dual boot.
Option 3: Windows: do everything in a VM. Install Linux (Debian, Ubuntu) in a VM. Virtualbox works. Campus has a site license for VMWare. Use git, emacs, etc, from within the VM.
Option 4: Windows and Unix (including Mac): use Vagrant. Vagrant installs a minimal VM for virtualbox and sets up folder sharing. Edit, run, debug, commit (using git tools), etc from outside the VM. On Windows, you'll need to, for example, 'vagrant ssh "cd /vagrant/build && make"' to compile. (Details below.)
Option 5: Unix (including Mac): use Docker, which is like Vagrant but more lightweight.

I suggest options 4 or 5. The configuration files (vagrant and docker) are in the gitlab repo.
Partially-configured virtual machine
Get the partially-configured virtual machine from here. Get the password in class. Other linux virtual machines are possible, but this one is already configured with a patched Qemu and has the rest of the toolchain installed.

Project setup using Vagrant

Here's what I think modern geekos development should look like in order to simplify and standardize. This is not what I do, but is the most likely to create a development environment that will definitely work.

Download and install virtualbox from https://www.virtualbox.org or via your package manager (apt-get install virtualbox).

Download and install vagrant from https://www.vagrantup.com.

Download and install git from https://git-scm.com or via your package manager (apt-get install git).

% git clone [the repository]

% cd geekos-project

% vagrant up

(wait a while, or address vagrant's woes about your virtualbox install)

% vagrant ssh

vagrant ssh

VAGRANT_PREFER_SYSTEM_BIN=1 vagrant ssh

% cd /vagrant/build

% screen make run

Screen is very useful; I would run within screen to make it possible to kill the curses-based qemu using ctrl-a k. To get help, ctrl-a ?, to create a new window, ctrl-a c, to switch windows, ctrl-a a.

I prefer to run qemu with an X window rather than have qemu take over the window using curses. On my linux or mac host, I would instead

% vagrant ssh -- -X

and remove "-curses" from the Makefile.linux.

If you'd prefer to avoid using the custom qemu (probably okay with the possible exception of the scheduler project), remove "-smpQuantum 1000" from build/Makefile.linux

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