Re: HHG and newbie Hurd Hackers

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 02:41:35PM -0500, R. Steven Rainwater wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-09-18 at 17:37, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> > R. Steven Rainwater, le Tue 18 Sep 2007 17:28:00 -0500, a écrit :

> > > But what would be more helpful for me right now is a "How to
> > > become a Hurd Hacker" tutorial
> >
> > Well, contribute by writing it ;)
> 
> Okay, I've finally got a rough draft together.
[...]
>  http://gnu.ncc.com/doku.php?id=how_to_become_a_hurd_hacker

This is really impressive!

I think you should put it into the wiki, so it's better exposed, and
people can easily make further refinements :-)

Some notes:

- It's called Hurd/Mach, not Mach/Hurd. (You can read it as "Hurd on
  Mach".) Just like GNU/Linux. The Hurd is the system running on top of
  the Mach micorkernel. Also, no need to always put the GNU in front :-)
- There is nothing wrong with using qemu for development. Many Hurd
  developers do so. Running on "real" hardware or emulated is mostly a
  matter of taste.
- Should the installation instructions really be contained in this
  document? Wouldn't it be better to put them in a different wiki page?
  (Perhaps incorporate them in some existing page even.)
   - I don't think there is a need to disable USB, sound etc. Mach
     should just ignore unknown devices. Also note that shared
     interrupts are only a problem if they are shared by *supported*
     devices.
   - I'm not sure, but is it really necessary to copy Grub files from
     the boot CD? Doesn't the standard system have grub package
     installed (and thus grub files in /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc)?
- You mention that "make install" after the Hurd build will overwrite
  the existing servers. Would be nice if you also would mention how to
  recover from that if the system doesn't work anymore :-) (Also, it not
  only overwrites the actual servers, but also the libraries.)
- You might want to mention that porting/fixing packages that don't
  presently work on the Hurd, is a pretty good way to get into Hurd
  hacking gradually.
- You suggest choosing a task to work on only after learning about Hurd
  internals. But most people find it easier to start right away with
  tasks that are not too involved, learning only what is necessary to
  accomplish the task at hand.

I see little else that could be improved -- you did really great work on
this :-)

-antrik-