Re: GSoC ideas

[Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org>]

Manolis Ragkousis writes:

> Hello everyone,
>
> As I am still a student I would like to suggest continuing the project
> of porting Guix to GNU/Hurd in this GSoC as well, with the objective of
> having a working GuixSD/Hurd by the end of the summer.
>
> After discussions with Justus and Samuel in FOSDEM about the Guix-Hurd
> port I am starting to have a good idea on what is left to be done and
> the solution needed for the problems we have.
>
> So here's a preliminary timeline as well as a list of things to be done:
>
> Before May:
>
> 1) Merge wip-hurd branch.
> 2) Make the daemon handle chroot builds on the Hurd.
> Note here that on the Hurd, one does not need to be root to achieve
> isolation, so I should change the daemon to use this capability.
> 3) Instead of using the Linux syscall guile wrappers, I should modify
> Guix to use a more Hurdish way (i.e settrans) so later on we can handle
> translators and bootstrap a GNU/Hurd system.
> 4) Better understand how GuixSD startup works.
>
> May-August:
> 1) Implement the mechanisms for creating and mounting the initial
> filesystem and starting the system.
> 2) Implement the mechanisms to handle the Hurd servers in /hurd. I
> remember I was told that there may be an issue when the servers are not
> actually there (i.e all the binaries are in the /gnu/store). Would love
> if somebody could tell us more on that.
> 3) Isolate Linuxisms around Guix.
> 4) David Michael has made an excelent work on getting Shepherd working
> with Hurd so I don't think we will have any serious issues with the init
> daemon.
> 5) Others that will come up.. In the following weeks I will work closely
> with the Hurd guys to make sure we get a better understanding of
> everything and a detailed timeline.
>
> End of GSoC:
> Have a working GuixSD with Hurd as the kernel.
>
> Currently Justus (and others soon :-)) are testing Guix on their
> machines. We have some issues but we are working on them.
>
> Please feel free to add/correct anything from the above. Your
> comment/opinion may help to get things up and running faster :-)
>
> Finally I want to say that I will continue my work on this, regardless
> of GSoC or not, but I would like it if it was. :-)
>
> Thank you,
> Manolis

I can't speak for everyone else but it feels like this would be a great
project for you to contininue.  The guile-emacs project ran for a few
years, so I don't see any blocker on continuing, right?