Why there's no build env VM for building the VirtualBox?

[8ohmh]

Hello,

currently I'm wondering myself why there are no efforts to create a build environment (Ubuntu, Debian, Windows etc.) for building VirtualBox, like Mozilla's Firefox Build VM https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc ... ing_the_VM or OpenWRT build env VM?

What is the reason against?

Is it possible e.g. to build VirtualBox in its own VM with a mem of 2GB?

Thanks in advance for the answers?

[michaln]

The major reason against is that the one build environment that's hard to set up (Windows) is the one we can't distribute. The minor reason is that building VirtualBox already takes a lot of time when you throw all of your host's resources at it and doing it in the VM adds significant overhead. The other minor reason is that there's not too much one can do with VirtualBox in a VM (very different from a browser!) so you'd still have to get it on the host somehow.

For the non-Windows hosts, the number of people who could do anything useful with the source and aren't capable of setting up the build environment is expected to be very close to zero.

Obviously if someone wants to put such VM(s) together and distribute it, Oracle can't stop that.