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Date:      Sun, 10 Jun 2012 08:55:52 +0200
From:      Bernhard Froehlich <decke@FreeBSD.org>
To:        <hackers@freebsd.org>
Subject:   VirtualBox on FreeBSD is looking for you!
Message-ID:  <a845bb1dce42bd27135055b397ff4573@bluelife.at>

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Hi VirtualBox users!

We are again at the point where I am kindly asking if someone is
interested to help with the VirtualBox on FreeBSD work. We started
with an active team of around 3 people but since about one year I
ended up being a lonely ranger. Maintaining such a beast/high
profile port by a single person is not possible for a longer period
so we should really try to form a team to improve the situation.

Additionally I started working on redports.org which requires more
and more time so I cannot dedicate all my work to virtualbox.

The situation of the port right now is not bad but I always end up
fire fighting and only concentrate on serious problems due to the
limited time I have. So it happens that people send bugreports and
patches for virtualbox and don't get a response for weeks if at all.
A lot of bugs that we have since day one are still present and the
list of items that we should seriously do is getting longer.

Many things of them are userland and porting stuff but there are
also a lot of things to do in the kernel modules.
Andriy Gapon has rewritten the r0 memory allocation stuff which
significantly improved the situation in that area but the
networking kernel modules are still in a bad shape. There are
various known bugs (performance problems, instabilities, ...) in
that area so it would be great if someone with networking expertise
could have a look at the code.
The USB stuff needs some love too. It is there but only works for a
few special combinations of Device and Guest OS.
Since VirtualBox 4.1 there is experimental support for PCI Passthrough
so if we want that we need some Kernel API for the Intel/AMD IOMMU.
I think the IOMMU code has already been written for BeHyVe so we
need someone who puts all the stuff together and wants to find out
how to integrate that in the kernel and vbox. The vbox developers
offered their help on that but they need a Kernel API before we
can start talking about it.


So what is it that the virtualbox team needs to do?

- regulary test latest SVN sources to find new problems early
   (build, runtime testing, create build fixes)
- maintain all 8 ports (changes in CURRENT or other port updates
   keep breaking virtualbox around once per month)
- update ports to new bugfix releases
- review patches from the community and send them upstream then
   nag vbox developers to get them committed
- help users to diagnose problems (help debugging, get stacktraces,
   collect information, give hints)
- further porting efforts (coordinate and probably do it yourself)
   - optionsng adaptions
   - FreeBSD installer for the vbox additions to be able to build a
     VBoxAdditions.iso with FreeBSD support
   - implement vboxsf support (Shared Folders)
   - PCI Passthrough support
   - USB support (needs fixing)
   - Networking support (needs fixing)


It is unrealistic that one single person can do a majority of these
things so we seriously need a few people from different areas to
improve the situation. Be it kernel developers, ports people or just
power users that can help testing and diagnosing bugs.

If you have an interest in VirtualBox on FreeBSD and a few spare
cycles please get in contact with us (me?) to coordinate the further
steps. I will do my best to help answering questions and help you
with your first steps in vbox land. Don't worry if you think you are
not experienced enough for the task. We all started that way and you
get the chance to learn a lot - it just needs some time to get used
to it.

I have also created a dedicated VirtualBox on FreeBSD channel on
freenode: #freebsd-vbox so you're welcome to join us!

-- 
Bernhard Froehlich
http://www.bluelife.at/



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