netbsd-gsoc-scripts

Support scripts for my NetBSD development environment. Initially made public to help my 2024 Google Summer of Code student to compile NetBSD and run it in a VM.

Use this in conjuntion with direnv(1) to add the script directory automatically to the shell's PATH variable. direnv also sets some environment variables which are used by the scripts.

Support scripts

The utilities are:

,run-build.sh

Runs ./build.sh with options to do an unprivileged build, using a standard obj directory for build artifacts, and creating all the output from build.sh under that directory.

It also keeps a log of all invocations with timestamps in ",run-build.sh.log."

Usage: ,run-build.sh MACHINE [build.sh-options...]

MACHINE is one of the MACHINE values that build.sh list-arch prints.

,run-qemu

Runs NetBSD in a QEMU VM. It has sensible defaults. It has command line options to simplify often used QEMU incantations.

Run it with the -h or --help options to print the usage message.

,mkobj

Create a NetBSD build system OBJDIR (default "obj") and mark it as not to be backuped.

,yymmdd

Outputs the current date in YYMMDD format -- shorter and faster to type than date +%y%m%d.

Setup

Directory layout

The scripts assumes that you keep your NetBSD source tree(s), obj directories, and other directories used by these scripts under a top-level directory, e.g. "~/work/netbsd/".

The directory layout is:

~/work/netbsd/
	|
	\ .envrc 	- config file for direnv(1)
	\ scripts	- these scripts
	\ src		- the NetBSD sources
	\ obj		- the build artifacts
	\ vm		- holds the VM images and installation ISOs

direnv setup

Create .envrc in your top-level directory with the following contents:

PATH_add scripts
PATH_add obj/tools/bin
export CVS_RSH=ssh
# TOPDIR
export TD=${PWD}

Then run direnv allow allow in the top-level directory.

Why the commas?

In short:

• they don't conflict with system commands
• command completion: typing ",TAB" makes them easily discoverable

Thanks to Brandon Rhodes.

History

I created ,run-build.sh years ago to so that I don't have to type or paste in the common arguments to build.sh over and over again.

I published this in 2024 in order to create a common work environment with my Google Summer of Code student.