Re: [Xen-devel] New Outreachy Applicant

[George Dunlap <george.dunlap@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 7:35 AM, Ronald Rojas <ronladred@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi, I'm Ronald Rojas an undergraduate junior studying
> computer science at New York Unversity. I would like
> to apply fo the Xen projects Outreachy Program. After
> looking through the available projects I think I would
> be a good fit for creating the golang bindings for
> libxl. I'm proficient in C , familar with Golang, and
> very comfortable with linux. Would I be able to get a
> bit-sized task for the application process?

Ronald,

Thanks for your interest in the Xen Project!  Sorry for the delay in
responding -- somehow your mail either never made it to my personal
inbox or I accidentally deleted it instead of filing it properly.  I
saw your question on IRC and now found your mail here on xen-devel.

First, I want to emphasize that Outreachy internships should be
considered a full-time job.  As part of the application process you
will be asked to confirm that you will not be taking any classes, nor
have any other significant commitments (such as another job) during
the period of the internship.

Now on to the bite-sized task.  We've actually found that one of the
difficult parts of getting going with our project is making sure that
you understand how to get your whole system and environment set up.
And another thing we want to see is to what degree you can balance
figuring things out, finding the answers on the web, and asking for
help when you need it.

So with that in mind, we've started experimenting with tasks which
don't contribute very much to the project directly, but provide a
really solid base of knowledge to do further contributions.

So here's my challenge for you.

-------
OUTCOME

Attached is the very beginnings of a set of golang bindings that I
wrote for a project of my own.  They contain an implementation of
Context.Open() and Context.ListCpupool().

Write a simple go program that will list the current cpu pools,
similar to the output of "xl cpupool-list".  No need to handle extra
arguments or modify libxl.go (beyond what may be needed to compile it).

Please post a copy of your .go program, along with the results of
output *when more than one VM is running*.

STEPS

1. Set up a system running Linux

If you don't have one, Ubuntu, Fedora, or Debian should all be fine.

2. Download, build, and install the latest development
version of Xen.  The following page should be useful:

https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Compiling_Xen_From_Source

I would recommend using "make debball" or "make rpmball" over the
"make install".

3. You'll need to build an image for at least one guest VM.

There are tons of options here, but one really simple thing would be
to follow this HOWTO from a previous OPW intern:

https://umasharma17.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/creating-guests-using-xl-in-xen/

4. Write your go program

The go program will need to Open() the context, then call DomainInfo()
on the target domain ID, and output the required info based on "xl
list".

libxl.go uses cgo to compile a library against C.  If you have the
libraries set up properly, the current version should just work.

------

That's it!  Remember that the goal of this is to see how well you
balance figuring things out on your own vs asking questions.  So try
to figure things out on your own, but when you run into a bit of
difficultly, don't hesitate to ask questions or clarification --
particularly at the beginning.

You can ask questions either here on xen-devel or on the #xendevel or
#xen-opw channels on freenode IRC.

Good luck,
 -George

Attachment: libxl.go
Description: Text Data

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