[Pkg-virtualbox-devel] Bug#691148: Debian's options

[Alexey Eromenko]

Hmm. I did not know of those BIOS news.

What are Debian's options ?

* Move VirtualBox 4.2 from "main" to "contrib" repo
Positives: least work required. Keeps 100% compatibility with Upstream.
Negatives: Demotivates Free Software developers.

* Use VirtualBox 4.2: Remove OpenWatcom code, and build BIOS from
assembler files
Positives: relatively little work required.
Negatives: Inability to backport upstream BIOS fixes into Debian's code.

* Move to VirtualBox 4.2 codebase, but keep VBox 4.1 BIOS.
Positives: Allows moving to VirtualBox 4.2 (the really big changes in
VBox are in user-space and in guest additions, not in BIOS and not in
kernel)
Negatives: I did not find out how-to do this.

* Stay with VirtualBox 4.1 forever (mini-fork)
Positives: Keeps stable base
Negatives: Lots of work; Will require constant patching to support new
Linux kernels. (and X11 drivers, for guest additions)

* Full fork of VirtualBox 4.1 ("HyperBox" ?)
Positives: Will offer major new features, that do not exist in
Oracle's VirtualBox [1]; More community control.
Negatives: Same as with mini-fork; Lots of work; Will require constant
patching to support new upstream Linux kernels. (and X11 drivers, for
guest additions). Taming the 300 MB monster (VBox source code,
unzipped) is a difficult task.
Eventually will lose compatibility with upstream.
Will be difficult to merge with upstream Oracle in the future.

[1] Major new features in question: (patches that Oracle rejected)
A. Unattended Guest OS Install - vbox-unattended (like VMware Easy Install)
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=46798

B. Hide VM from desktop taskbar (like Hyper-V)
https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=46616

Any other options, that I forgot ?
-- 
-Alexey Eromenko "Technologov"