[vbox-dev] Extension pack for FreeBSD

[Mario Lobo]

On Wed, 13 May 2020 21:57:13 +0200
"Knut St. Osmundsen" <knut.osmundsen at oracle.com> wrote:

> Hi Lobo.
> 
> On 2020-05-06 21:44, Mario Lobo wrote:
> > Hi;
> >
> > I wrote an e-mail during the days of Frank Mehnert with an appeal
> > for the availability of an extension pack for FreeBSD.
> >
> > This was his answer:
> >
> >> Providing Extenicode for FreeBSD is not impossible but would
> >> require some effort. The most important part is probably to find a
> >> compatible build environment.
> >> I don't say "No" in general but we need to think about this in more
> >> detail.
> > This was 4 years ago.
> >
> > So this is just to know if there might a chance for this to happen
> > or if I should bury my dreams of it for good.
> >
> > Best regards,
> 
> The idea has been regularly bought up internally over the years. 
> Initially the idea was to provide a set of platform agnostic extension
> pack files that would work on most unsupported host OS (back then
> FreeBSD, OS/2 and maybe NetBSD).  We've since dropped support for
> 32-bit builds, which means we're down to FreeBSD (and maybe NetBSD) as
> potential target host(s), however we've added a whole lot more C++ fun
> to the mix, so not so confident we can pull this agnostic build off so
> easily any more.
> 
> As FrankM mentioned back then, it's not a lot of work setting up a
> FreeBSD build VM running the current stable version and tweak the
> build to run on it.  What will happen though, is that in a year or
> two, it will need updating to a newer version and we'd postpone that
> for a while too long and the FreeBSD users would have to put up with
> installing lots of compat libs and the stuff might not be working
> quite optimally even then.  We'd also have trouble testing what we
> build, as we don't currently build VBox for FreeBSD hosts internally
> or have any FreeBSD test boxes.  So, we'd be relying entirely on the
> community for QA.
> 
> For that reason and others there may be trouble convincing the
> upstairs crowd that this is a good idea. Could maybe be easier if it
> was an host agnostic build though.  Will have to discuss this a
> little internally again ...
> 

Hi Knut

First, thank you for such detailed reply.

FreeBSD is already behind with the port. The official port version is
still 5.2.34. I myself managed to compile and run successfully VBox
6.0.8 but only on BSD 11.3 STABLE. All my attempts to run
it on higher BSD versions have failed so far.

This means that BSD doesn't even "deserve" to ask about extensions. At
least until we catch up with VBox's latest version.

In the end, it is good to know that the idea was not thrown out and it
is still being discussed.

For what it's worth, I'll post this conversation on our lists, in the
hopes that it stimulates our comunity to push forward.

Again, thank you for your kind attention and response.

Best wishes,
-- 
Mario Lobo
FreeBSD since 2.2.8 [not Pro-Audio.... YET!!]

"UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, 
because that would also stop you from doing clever things."