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[[!meta title="Original proposal"]]
*This is the proposal as it has been submitted to Google Summer of
Code.*
# The name of the project
Virtualization Using Hurd Mechanisms
# Summary
The goal is to create tools that let a user create a set of servers
that implement a Hurd environment and the necessary resources, with
the possibility of relying on existing servers in the parent Hurd for
some of them, instead of creating them.
# Benefits
This project will permit to create isolated systems but with far more
flexibility than traditional virtualization tools, because the degree
of isolation can be changed and possibly not only at creation time,
and communication and sharing of subsystems can be arranged between
isolated systems.
# Deliverables
D1 — User stories for the toolset, that will later serve as examples
for the documentation
D2 — Exhaustive but concise documentation of the set of needed servers
making a working Hurd system (as much for me as for future users of
the tool, building and linking to existing Hurd documentation)
D3 — Low-level tool to create a working Hurd environment (possibly
with strong limitations on the shape of the resources used by the
environment, most probably on the underlying filesystem)
D4 — Fake or noop servers for the documented set of needed servers, to
be provided instead of working ones, where a feature is to be denied
to a Hurd environnement
D5 — Proxy servers, where desirable, to provide access to servers
outside the environment (in ocaps terminology, caretakers)
D6 — Extension of the low-level tool from D3 to remove its
unreasonable limitations
D7 — High-level tools to easily create environments and run programs
in them (akin respectively to debootstrap and schroot)
D8 — If possible, extensions to the D5 and D7 tools to enable dynamic
modifications of the features and authority granted to environments
and creation of multiple interconnected environments
# Plan
I intend to develop using the Scrum method, with sprints of two weeks,
which mean that each two weeks, I will present at least one new
working feature, working incrementally towards the full deliverable. I
will also push my code at least once a day to a public Git hosting,
including topic branches, so my progress can be followed easily.
I intend to start from crosshurd and see how I can hook in its process
of creation to allow being provided alternatives. Depending on how
crosshurd is malleable to those changes, a modified crosshurd will
either be a learning-stage prototype or the base of the
implementation.
To reuse Git terminology, once plumbing tools (i.e. tools that take
detailed invocation information for each server) are working fine,
I'll move on to porcelain tools, the final UI (i.e. tools that provide
sensible default options, aliases mechanisms, etc.).
# Communication
I'm usually easy to reach through both email and jabber, so those and
IRC will be my main way to inform my mentor and ask questions. I'll
setup an ikiwiki to have a summary of the exchanges and the temporary
documentation of the project (i.e. documentation that doesn't fit with
the code yet).
# Qualification
Thansk to or because of my participation to the Hurd mailing lists,
I've been utterly contaminated by the concept of POLA a few years
ago. Since then, I've been longing, almost in a painful way, for a
object-capability flavour of Debian. Having to deal in my previous day
jobs with virtualization tools like Xen and VMWare when I knew there
would be no need for paravirtualization or emulation to isolate
systems in an object-capability OS only made it worst.
Now most of the code I produce naturally becomes capability oriented,
even if my underlying platform, programming language or OS, doesn't
provide true capabilities. And creating true POLA systems and making
it possible for others to benefit from POLA is now one of my dreams.
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