I would like to start a thread that I hope will result in more focus and direction for the Build and Multi-OS teams. It’s right before I disappear for vacation, so I’ll ask Saul and Cesar to address any follow-ups.

What I would like to propose is that we as a community take on the task of delivering support for Ubuntu as a StarlingX host OS for the November 2019 release.  This would allow us to support the ~35% of the cloud ecosystem that doesn’t run on RHEL or CentOS.

It will require a lot of work and therefore we should start as soon as possible.  What I would propose we do is:

1) The Build team to create a new and separate build system for an Ubuntu LTS hosted ISO [0]

2) The MultiOS team to review the outstanding carried patches and apply those needed to the Ubuntu packages

3) The MultiOS team to update the system as needed to use an Ubuntu installer to get controller-0 fully installed

4) Which would then lead to work in the MultiOS team to bring up the Ubuntu hosted StarlingX in Simplex mode [1].

We would then have a (kind of) working StarlingX image that will enable the broader community to contribute to all of the other work needed to deliver a fully supported Ubuntu host for the November release.  That work would include bringing up the other configurations beyond Simplex, changes to the StarlingX software management and update services, the additional testing needed, and other tasks which can be parallelized.

Meanwhile, on the Intel side we have received new guidance from our new management on the requirement for Clear Linux support.  We will continue but slow down that work for now and focus on Ubuntu.  So for November, the goal is to support 2 Host OS’s, not 3.

We will need support and contributions from the community to achieve this goal in time for November.  The MultiOS team in particular will need help and additional contribtutors.

   Brucej

[0] Making the build system common between Ubuntu and CentOS is hard and probably should not be attempted.  We should leverage what we can, of course, from our own code and the broader ecosystem.

[1] Or in which ever configuration is easier….