Re: [Xen-devel] Any tips for a newbie Xen developer? How to understand basics and start contributing fast

[Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2012-03-21 at 19:30 +0000, Ranjith Krishnan wrote:
> Hello, 
> 
> I am a graduate student at the University of Kansas, Lawrence and am
> interested in working on Xen, and contribute towards it.
> I have background in C/C++ coding, and have taken courses in Operating
> Systems, Virtual Machines, Client-Server programming, Data structures
> etc. 
> 
> I am just beginning to get Xen working on my system. Have a
> yum-install version working, but will be building xen from source so
> that I can look at the source code and figure out how things are
> working/implemented. 
> 
> I got the book, "The definitive guide to the Xen hypervisor" mentioned
> in the wiki. 
> 
> My questions are these.
> 
> 1. Is my background enough to figure out basics of xen, and provide
> meaningful contributions to some components in the Xen hypervisor
> codebase ?

It sounds like it.

> 2. Are there any must read documentations on the xen wiki or xen.org
> page that will help me get upto speed quick ? I must say I am a bit
> overwhelmed since Xen is a considerable effort and there is a lot of
> documentation on the webpage.  There is a lot of new terminology that
> I am bombarded with (pvops, xend, xapi etc). 
> 
> 3. Are there any projects available to work on currently ?

The answers to both of these largely depend on where your particular
interests lie so I'll start by answering only the 3rd question.

There is a (slightly unloved) list of potential projects at
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_Development_Projects
Also you may find some inspiration in the previous GSoC ideas pages:
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Archived/GSoc_2011_Ideas
http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Archived/GSoC_2012_Ideas
and a more raw list of 2012 ideas:
http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2012-02/msg02637.html

You should probably check with the list before investing to much time in
any of these since they may already be in progress.

Ian.


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