Awesome

This repo contains the build environment used to build Mezzano. As part of this procedure, Mezzano itself is cloned as a sub-project to this project. Therefore, an independent clone of Mezzano is unnecessary.

Prerequisites

A recent 64-bit version of SBCL with Unicode support is required. SBCL may be obtained at www.sbcl.org

Versions 1.2.4, 1.2.10, 1.3.1, 1.3.2, 1.3.5, and 1.4.5 are known to work. Newer versions should work, but have not been tested.

The following systems should be installed using Quicklisp:

Alexandria
Iterate
Nibbles
CL-PPCRE
CL-FAD
closer-mop
trivial-gray-streams

To install the packages with Quicklisp, install SBCL and Quicklisp. Then at a shell prompt, run:

sbcl --script /path/to/quicklisp.lisp

(on Debian and Ubuntu based Linux systems, if you install Quicklisp through the package manager it's in sbcl --script /usr/share/cl-quicklisp/quicklisp.lisp)

In SBCL type each of the following commands:

(quicklisp-quickstart:install)
(ql:add-to-init-file)
(ql:quickload '(alexandria iterate nibbles cl-fad cl-ppcre closer-mop trivial-gray-streams))
(quit)

Additionally, you will need VirtualBox to create the vmdk file and either QEMU or VirtualBox to run it.

Quick Start

Run git submodule update --init Set SBCL and FILE_SERVER_IP in the top-level Makefile. SBCL must point at the SBCL binary, and FILE_SERVER_IP to the IP address of the local machine.

Note! Addresses on 10.0.2.0/24 networks are not supported (such as 10.0.2.5), as this conflicts with the network provided by QEMU and VirtualBox. IPv6 addresses are not supported.
Run make cold-image-vmdk This will build a cold image suitable for use with VirtualBox, and should only take a few minutes.
Run make run-file-server The file-server must be running during step 3.
Configure a VirtualBox VM to point at the new mezzano.vmdk image and run it.

   VM settings:
   General->Type: Other
            Version: Other/Unknown (64-bit)
   System->Motherboard->Base Memory: 2GB
   System->Acceleration->Enable VT-x/AMV-V: enabled
                         Enable Nested Paging: enabled
   Storage->IDE controller with mezzano.vmdk attached on the Primary Master hard disk.
   Network->Adapter 1: enabled
            Attached to: NAT
            Adapter Type (advanced): virtio-net
   Serial Ports->Port 1: enabled
            Port Mode: Raw file
            Path: /some/file
   Audio->Audio Controller: Intel HD Audio

Wait. The rest of the system is being compiled. Eventually a REPL and the desktop will appear.
Finish up. Once the desktop has appeared and the system has finished working (no blue run light) then (snapshot-and-exit) can be run in the initial REPL to finalize the state of the system and close the initial REPL.

Due to the use of submodules you need to run git submodule update --init after pulling to update to the latest version.

Using QEMU/KVM instead of VirtualBox

After building a cold image and starting the file-server as described by the Quick Start section above run make qemu or make kvm to run QEMU. Using KVM is recommended as it is much faster than QEMU.

Note that the first time you run Mezzano, a lot of the code is compiled and boot time can take ten minutes or more on slow machines. Subsequent boots are much faster, typically under two minutes.