Re: [Xen-devel] Xen-Project apply | Outreachy (interest in 1. High-level Language Support with Unikraft / 2. Xen on ARM: create multiple guests from device tree)

[Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Rupal,

I CC'ed two lists and the mentors of projects. Thank you for your interest in 
the projects.

> I went through 
> https://www.outreachy.org/2018-may-august/communities/xen-project/ 
> project page and could see that each of these two projects has their own set 
> of mentors 
> (2 each, of which you are co-mentoring 1st one, right?).
Correct.

Because Simon has not mentored before, I am helping out with his projects. Note 
that Simon 
is the technical expert on Unikraft.
With Stefano/Edgar it is similar.
So, we are pairing an experienced mentor, with a less experienced one.

> Can you please give me some pointers as to how to get started? 
Sure

First:
* Please sign up to the minios-devel@ and/or xen-devel@ (as appropriate)
   (see http://lists.xenproject.org for instructions: if you use the "subscribe 
   subject pattern" make sure you send the mail to minios-devel-request@
   lists.xenproject.org, ...) 
* Please double check time requirements: This is because in the past there 
   frequently were issues with Outreachy and University course time 
   requirements in particular with Universities from India. I think IIITD may 
be 
   fine, but make sure it is. I believe that there will be extra checks later 
in the 
   application process, which may require letters from your University. We had 
   one case, where an applicant did a small project, but we were not allowed 
   to accept her due to time requirements.
* Let us know timezone you are in and when you can hang out on IRC 
   * Simon and me are both based in UTC+1 - IRC is #unikraft
   * Stefano and Edgar). Stefano are in UTC-8 and UTC-7 or 6 (can't quite 
recall) 
      - IRC is #xendevel
   * Note that my IRC nick is lars_kurth, Simon's is skuezer, Stefano's is 
      sstabellini, and I am afraid I can't remember Edgar's
* Your registered IRC nickname (please register your nick - see 
   https://www.xenproject.org/help/irc.html under Netiquette)

> Like is there some official communication channel for both these projects 
> where 
> new-comers or internship aspirants can come and discuss on things to do and 
> post doubts? 
No, not as such. We do everything straight from the beginning on a public 
mailing
list and/or IRC (the latter will usually require some coordination to make sure 
you
are both on-line at the same time). For IRC you may want to consider an IRC
bouncer or ZNC or make sure you keep your IRC client switched on all the time.
Otherwise you will miss parts of conversations. 

> Or shall I drop a separate email to both the project's specific mentors, if 
> that's okay?
Only use mails *without* a list for discussions which should not be made public
due to privacy concerns (e.g. if you were to swap phone numbers, or you are 
ill, ...). 
Otherwise use a public mailing list and/or IRC. 

For now, just use this thread. Once you have decided which of the two projects 
you want
to work on and for specific questions on a project, please start a new thread 
with the list 
and each mentor CC'ed.

> And also about the projects issue/bug tracker system and codebase, so that I 
> can go through them till then.

If you are interested in Unikraft
* Build the hello world unikraft app: see 
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Category:Unikraft & http://unikraft.neclab.eu/ 
;
and report back
* Familiarize yourself with the workflow at 
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Submitting_Xen_Project_Patches#How_to_Generate.2C_and_Submit_a_Xen_Project_Patch_to_MiniOS_and_Unikraft
(please read the entire document)

For the ARM project, it would be good to get familiar with Xen on ARM, to learn 
how to build it:
* 
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_ARM_with_Virtualization_Extensions#Building_Xen_on_ARM
* Use QEMU to emulate an ARM board to run Xen on it, for testing and 
development:
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_ARM_with_Virtualization_Extensions/qemu-system-aarch64
* You will also need to be familiar with 
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Submitting_Xen_Project_Patches

> And once I can get a good hang of the codebase and what exact tasks I need to 
> work on, get in a healthy 
> discussion with the mentors, I will be able to make a good contribution to 
> the project and submit the proposal.
The Unikraft codebase is fairly small and there are good guides on how to get 
started (link above). If anything is
unclear, or could be improved while you read it submit a patch (the source of 
the docs are in 
http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=unikraft/unikraft.git;a=tree;f=doc;hb=HEAD). 

You probably also need to think about which High-level language you would want 
to add. Such a library would
be an external library - see  
http://unikraft.neclab.eu/developers-external-lib.html - and maybe creating a 
boilerplate almost empty library and use it in a test Hello World app. This 
will get you a sense of
how to plumb everything together and how the build system works. It wouldn't be 
something we can commit 
into tree until it is more functional (have to defer to Simon): you should 
create the code via git maybe on a 
personal github repo. Unfortunately, this won't help much with the Outreachy 
contribution requirement.

To work around this, I was thinking that while you go through this process and 
find gaps/improvements in the 
docs, you could submit patches to improve the docs. That would help with the 
initial contribution requirement, 
while getting you a sense of what you need to do for the project. Note that 
Simon is travelling at the moment. 
If you have specific technical questions, please send them with a clear issue 
description in the title to 
minios-devel@ and CC Simon and me. This will probably keep you busy for a few 
days and we can reconvene
next week to figure out a more challenging code contribution.

For the ARM codebase on this project, I have to defer to Stefano/Edgar. I am 
sure they can point you to the main
functions in the code for the project. 

Feel free to ask any questions!

Regards
Lars

From: Rupal Jain <rupal15081@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Friday, 16 February 2018 at 10:24
To: Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Xen-Project apply | Outreachy


Hi, Lars. 

I am Rupal Jain, a 3-rd year undergrad majoring in Computer Science at IIIT 
Delhi, India. I am applying to Outreachy this round and your projects 
interested me quite a lot. I want to submit proposals for 2 projects under 
"Zen-project":
1.  High-level Language Support with Unikraft
2.  Xen on ARM: create multiple guests from device tree 

I went through 
https://www.outreachy.org/2018-may-august/communities/xen-project/ project page 
and could see that each of these two projects has their own set of mentors (2 
each, of which you are co-mentoring 1st one, right?).

Can you please give me some pointers as to how to get started? Like is there 
some official communication channel for both these projects where new-comers or 
internship aspirants can come and discuss on things to do and post doubts? Or 
shall I drop a separate email to both the project's specific mentors, if that's 
okay?
And also about the projects issue/bug tracker system and codebase, so that I 
can go through them till then.

And once I can get a good hang of the codebase and what exact tasks I need to 
work on, get in a healthy discussion with the mentors, I will be able to make a 
good contribution to the project and submit the proposal.

Thanks in anticipation.


-------

Thanks and regards
Rupal Jain
2015081
CSE undergrad(3rd year) | IIITD


‌

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