List of OSS Community Contributions to OSE

Discussions related to using the OSE version of VirtualBox.
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Technologov
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Location: Israel

List of OSS Community Contributions to OSE

Post by Technologov »

In the past, I have talked about The VirtualBox OSS community.
The current situation is worrying me because about 99.9% of the code is contributed by Oracle, and only very small portions of the code are contributed by the community. Healthy OSS projects means at least 40% should be made by the OSS community.
By writing this, I decided to make our community aware of this situation.

In this list I summarize the community contributions to VirtualBox OSE:

Accepted New Features:
  • Internationalization (Translations) (Since v1.4.0; except German and Russian)
  • FreeBSD host support (co-developed by Oracle and the FreeBSD community) (Since v3.0.0)
  • Mini-toolbar for Full-screen and seamless, by Huihong Luo of VMlite, rewritten by Oracle (Since v3.0.0)
  • Virtual Distributed Ethernet, by Renzo Davoli (Linux hosts only) (Since v3.2.0)
  • VNC Server (Since v3.2.0)
  • 3D acceleration for 64-bit Windows guests (Since v3.2.2) (link)
  • Shared Folders: symlinks by "bacam" (Linux guests only) (Since v4.0.0), Wish #818
  • Audio: the DirectSound backend now allows VMs to be audible when another DirectSound application is active, including another VM (bug #5578; Windows hosts only) (Since v4.0.0)
  • UDP Tunnel networking mode, by Christophe Devriese (since v4.1.0)
  • CPU exec cap in GUI, by "Technologov" (+Oracle) (since v4.1.0)
  • USB Tablet support for Windows 98 guests, by stefan.becker (+Oracle) (since v4.1.0)
  • Haiku operating system guest additions (source code, by Mike Smith, with Alexander von Gluck being his mentor) (since v4.2.0?). link
Some Fixes / Improvements:
  • few fixes by VMlite team, mostly better support for Microsoft VHD format (for v3.2.0 ?)
  • Some documentation by "Technologov" (+Oracle) (2D troubleshooting + VDE + UDP tunnel) (since v4.1.0)
  • PulseAudio fixes by Arthur Taylor (for v4.0.0 ?)
  • Shared Folders improvements for Solaris Guests, by Ronald (since v4.1.x)
Pending Review:
  • shared folders for Windows fixes, by "helloworld" - link
  • Windows 7 hardware Volume Licence Key, by 'scp' - link
    updated version of the this: ACPI SLIC Patch, by Jan Schunk (scpcom/*AT*/gmx.de), Dec.2011. link
  • BIOS Floppy Int 13 AL = 0x17, AL = 0x18 operations (in maling-list, 2012-01-11) by Dave Meagher
  • DirectSound patch, that lets target several sound cards (Windows Hosts only), by Ivo "UFO"
  • vbox-unattended patch, by Technologov. Jan 2012. link
Research papers by VirtualBox community:
  • Seamless mode, by Technologov, (May 2007, VBox 1.3-era), (part of openSUSE 10.3 docs) -- official support came in VBox 1.5 (Sep 2007)
  • Mac OS X guest support, by Technologov, (Oct 2007, VBox 1.5-era), link -- official support came in VBox 3.2 (May 2010)
  • Unattended Guest OS install, by Technologov, (Dec 2011, VBox 4.1-era), link
  • Updating network interfaces list speed-up (link)
Rejected, but patches exist:
  • detach/reattach (show/hide) the UI from a running VM window by "Technologov" - link
  • 48 GB RAM per VM (for v3.1/3.2) - by HubTou - link (Irrelevant starting with VirtualBox 4.1)
  • FreeBSD Guest Additions
  • 16 vNICs per VM - by Technologov - link, Wish #8805
  • VirtualBox GUI improvement - hides disabled options (VT-x, SMP and some networking) (by "Technologov")
  • parport: Allow VMs to change the direction, by Bernhard Walle <bernhard /*AT*/ bwalle.de> -- Reason: Implemented by Oracle from scratch.
  • vbox-python3: by Ilya Kulakov. Reason: patch is incomplete, doesn't patches XPCOM. link
===
-Technologov
Attachments
slic-trunk.zip
ACPI SLIC Patch, MIT license
(5.97 KiB) Downloaded 144 times
floppyBios.txt
PATCH by Dave Meagher, 11.01.2012.
(11.68 KiB) Downloaded 138 times
DirectSoundDeviceSelection.patch.tgz
PATCH by Ivo Smits (aka "UFO"), 27.10.2011.
(919 Bytes) Downloaded 131 times
Toitoine
Posts: 24
Joined: 4. Nov 2007, 20:43

Re: List of OSS Community Contributions to OSE

Post by Toitoine »

You can add this to you list I guess https://github.com/pmj/virtio-net-osx
Technologov
Volunteer
Posts: 3342
Joined: 10. May 2007, 16:59
Location: Israel

Re: List of OSS Community Contributions to OSE

Post by Technologov »

Thanks !

Very nice to see VirtIO drivers for OS X guests ! (but currently it is indirectly related to VBox, as this was not submitted into VBox codebase)
I know that developers of BeeHyVe done something similar for FreeBSD.
mark.k
Posts: 2
Joined: 2. Aug 2012, 10:39

Re: List of OSS Community Contributions to OSE

Post by mark.k »

As someone who'd like to contribute, the first hurdle is building the thing.

See: www_dot_virtualbox_dot_org/wiki/Linux%20build%20instructions

"While we try to not favor any distribution, we only build with certain distributions. This includes Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo and Red Hat Enterprise Linux"

These instructions don't work for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. PerryGs work a lot better, but why do I have to go through two sets of instructions to get there?

What is the reference build platform? I don't have time to try out 4 or 5 different Linux installs to get this working.

I'd say the state of these instructions make it pretty clear that the developers are not particularly bothered about OSE contributions.
michaln
Oracle Corporation
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Re: List of OSS Community Contributions to OSE

Post by michaln »

mark.k wrote:I'd say the state of these instructions make it pretty clear that the developers are not particularly bothered about OSE contributions.
The paid VirtualBox developers are in the first, second, and third place bothered about the features and bug fixes requested by paying customers (which may come as a surprise to some!). I couldn't tell you why the OSE developers aren't trying to streamline the build process, but I suspect that once folks clear the initial hurdle, they stop worrying about it.

Of course building something as complex as VirtualBox and with hooks into so many parts of the system is always going to be difficult on Linux. That is a foundation of sand, shifting literally every day. It is fully expected that there will be frequent but hopefully minor breakages.

Specific issues can be resolved. Vague complaints no so much.
mark.k
Posts: 2
Joined: 2. Aug 2012, 10:39

Re: List of OSS Community Contributions to OSE

Post by mark.k »

michaln wrote:The paid VirtualBox developers are in the first, second, and third place bothered about the features and bug fixes requested by paying customers (which may come as a surprise to some!). I couldn't tell you why the OSE developers aren't trying to streamline the build process, but I suspect that once folks clear the initial hurdle, they stop worrying about it.
<shrug>
As a paying VB customer I would expect that the downloadable source from the VB site would come with build instructions that should work. It's nothing to do with OSE edition. It's just 'Virtual Box' now that there's a clear separation between the closed and open-source parts there don't appear to be two separate builds any more, one for the payed-for version and one for the OSE version.

The fact that there doesn't appear to be a reference build platform would definitely trouble me as a paying customer, because it would make me very concerned about the software quality. In fact it would trouble me as a job applicant to work on VB. I did seriously consider it but relocating to Ireland with a 3-month old baby ruled it out. Pity...
michaln wrote:Specific issues can be resolved. Vague complaints no so much.
12.04 LTS along with following the (now current) build instructions gives a build failure due to missing JDK. Sure, I can find the the explanation of this by searching forums and work out that I need to install JDK. Next up the VirtualBox binary hasn't appeared, and I don't have a src directory for the kernel stuff. At this point I realised that there must be another guide somewhere, one that works, and the one from Perryg does indeed work, although it's unclear how I build the binaries for 32-bit host based on his instructions.

My point is, if that is how you build the thing, why is it not linked on the VB build instructions page? I don't really want to know what might work. I want to know what the VB team are using for their releases. If their releases are built on some random developer's machine for any given release, then sorry, but they do not have reproducible builds and what I get in the binaries for any given release is anyone's guess. Not really the ideal way inspire confidence from your (paying) customers.

In my job we have a build environment. Every step of the preparation of that environment is documented. Anyone can install the same software and re-create that environment, although it's more common to copy someone else's virtual machine.

If I was a developer joining the VB team then I suspect I would be given something more than the supplied build instructions. So my suggestion for getting more contributors: You could start by deleting the build instructions and replace them with a link to the PerryG howto, and specify versions of [insert distro here] that are known to work, preferably one platform rather than several choices.
Perryg wrote: What does not work for you when building on Ubuntu 12.04? Please start a new thread under OSE and I will see if I can help.
I figured it out now, thanks to your help. My point was about ease of building, and the state of the build instructions, rather than any specific problems.

regards,
Mark.
mpack
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Re: List of OSS Community Contributions to OSE

Post by mpack »

Please take this discussion elsewhere - the connection to this topic seems tenuous at best. In fact I'm tempted to delete the last few messages, but Technologov (the OP) is also a mod so I'll leave it to him.
Ramshankar
Oracle Corporation
Posts: 793
Joined: 7. Jan 2008, 16:17

Re: List of OSS Community Contributions to OSE

Post by Ramshankar »

Could you please update the original post regarding Haiku additions? They were accepted and merged into the VirtualBox code sometime last year (iirc). Thanks.

EDIT: I know I could edit it myself but I'm not sure what the protocol/convention here regarding editing other moderator's posts here.
Oracle Corp.
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