FreeBSD Developer Summit

University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Cambridge, UK August 24 - 28, 2013

The invitation-only FreeBSD Developer Summit took place at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in Cambridge, UK between 24 and 28 August. Advanced registration was required.

If you have taken any pictures during the devsummit please add your site's URL to the following list:

We've posted a rough schedule on the DevSummit website. The general idea is that there will be social activities on Sunday August 25, then technical sessions on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Developers may want to arrive on Saturday August 24 or Sunday August 25, depending on their desire to go for a day-time social event on Sunday (trip to see the Technology Museum).

The main Devsummit room is FW11 (First floor, Northwest corner of the building); other rooms are available for break-out sessions and working groups. Due to a UK bank holiday on the Monday, you will need to be let into the building by a Devsummit organiser. On other mornings, you can go directly to the meeting room. Coffee will be provided prior to events starting at 10:00; lunch is at roughly 11:45 each day; we plan to conclude technical sessions at 17:00(ish). Lunch has been arranged (and is included in registration), and dinner bookings will be made (not included in your registration, except for the formal dinner on Tuesday). We will confirm dinner head counts each morning in order to size reservations suitably. William Gates Building floor maps can be found below.

For an overview and dinner, please see https://bsdcam.cl.cam.ac.uk/ . Below is the un-conference-style session scheduling.

• 13:00 PMC, Adrian Chadd Notes: PMC is the FreeBSD framework for exposing performance monitoring counters. This talk will focus on the Sandy Bridge micro-architecture and how the performance counters work, how intel suggests approaching performance monitoring and, how you drive the PMC framework.
• 13:20 OCaml and Objective-C / Smalltalk in the FreeBSD Kernel, Gabor Pali [slides] / Krystof Vasa: This talk will cover putting non-traditional languages into kernel space and the challenges associated with making them interoperate with code with strict constraints on latency, locking, and so on.
• 13:40 LLDB, Ed Maste slides: An overview of the new debugger, developed as part of the LLVM project, that Ed Maste has been porting to FreeBSD and plans for integration into the FreeBSD base system.
• 14:00 Newcons, Aleksandr Rybalko: Newcons going to be a modern replacement for current ageing FreeBSD console (introduced in 1999). It brings UTF-8 support at a console level. It's going to be KMS aware; the kernel can draw messages into screen without switching video modes set by Xorg. And hopefully will reduce the amount of Xorg video drivers, at least for basic drawing support.
• 14:20 x86 Model, Warren Hunt slides: Presentation of formal specification of the X86 using ACL2. Presentation of X86 binary verification. Discussion of what properties developers would like to specify and verify.

NetOS: x86 model PMC, lldb, Newcons, OCaml Not Wed: SAT + pkgng Tuesday: BIND, FreeBSD Foundation

We will have a couple of slots for short talks, to present your current work, brainstorm or ask for feedback on smaller items. Must not overlap with working groups.

We can probably host 3 to 4 working group sessions each day. If you want to run a working group add yourself along with a topic to the table below. The working group sessions are intended for groups of people to collaborate or hack on a specific topic and attendees are expected to arrive prepared, which also means that the working group chair(s) should provide some material upfront. Feel free to create a sub-page detailing your session. Each working group chair is expected to present the results of the group on Wednesday. We will add scheduling and room information later (current information in Days column is a hint, not the final schedule!).

Map of Cambridge, with the Computer Lab, accommodation, and pub to meet at on the first day, marked.

201308CambridgeDevsummitMap.pdf Downloadable PDF map of Cambridge and Developer Summit sites

Floor plans are available here: Maps of the William Gates Building and surrounding area.

You are specially interested in the 1st floor (EU/UK counting: ground, 1st, 2nd), WGB 1st floor room map

Cambridge, UK is located approximately 45 minutes North of London by train, with easy access by bus or train to St. Pancras International - Eurostar (45m rail), London Stansted Airport (40m rail), London Heathrow Airport (LHR - 2h rail), London Gatwick Airport (LGW - 2h rail), Manchester Airport (MIA - 4h rail), London Luton Airport (1h25m bus). European attendees may consider Eurostar or Stansted Airport preferred routes due to short transit time to Cambridge and lower prices. Visitors from the US or elsewhere will likely need to travel into one of London's major international airports, such as Heathrow or Gatwick. With the exception of Luton Airport, rail offers a more convenient but more expensive route to Cambridge than bus.

Please note: during the summer, rail service in and out of Cambridge is sometimes disrupted on Sundays due to rail works on the track between London Kings Cross and Cambridge. Attendees are encouraged to avoid the need to travel by rail on Sundays.

The Front door is located on Sidney Street about 1/2 way between Jesus Lane & Sussex Street and looks like this:

We will make a group booking of bicycles. This will be £22.50 for the week. Getting around Cambridge on a bicycle is very easy - they haven't invented hills yet.

You will need to collect your bike from Station Cycles in the Grand Arcade (please see the map). Note that Station Cycles is on Corn Exchange Street around the back of the Grand Arcade, it can not be accessed from inside the shopping centre. You will also need to return your bike to Station Cycles before you leave Cambridge.

Station Cycles has a list of names of people who have booked bikes. Please make sure that you have something with you that can prove that you are one of these people. Unlike last year when we allowed you to pay for your bicycle at time of registration, you will need to simply pay Station Cycles when you pick up the bike.

There is some space on the college campus for parking, but possibly not enough for everyone. If you can't find space, the Park Street Cycle Park (marked on the map) has (covered) space for 200 bicycles and is about two minutes walk from the college.

On Saturday night, we will convene at the Eagle around 19:00.

On Sunday, an afternoon walk to the Technology Museum to see steam engines has been organised. We will head to the Maypole in the evening. See bsdcam-attendees e-mail for details.

In case you are at loose ends, you might consider the following Cambridge activities:

• Fitzwilliam Museum - http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
• Whipple Museum of the History of Science - http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/whipple/
• Museum of Archeology and Anthropology - http://maa.cam.ac.uk/maa/
• Kettle's Yeard - http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk
• Museum of Cambridge - http://www.folkmuseum.org.uk
• Scott Polar Museum - http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/
• Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences - http://www.sedgwickmuseum.org

If you want to do something near Cambridge and are willing to do rail/bus/car:

• Duxford, the local branch of the Imperial War Museum: http://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-duxford
• Wimpole - http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/wimpole-estate/
• Anglesey Abbey - http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/anglesey-abbey/
• Wicken Fen - http://www.wicken.org.uk
• Ely Cathedral (and city) - http://www.elycathedral.org

Or take a trip to London – about 50 minutes by train – where you might see the British Library, British Museum, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Churchill War Rooms, Victoria and Albert Museum, Planetarium, Buckingham Palace, Tower of London, lots of gardens, houses, etc.

See email for details on WGB, eduroam, Lapwing. We will hand out “Lapwing tickets” during the opening session; these are preferred to the open WGB access point due to using JANET rather than a commercial DSL line. See http://www.ucs.cam.ac.uk/network/rules for University network access rules (AUP). Plan on bringing an Ethernet cable for possible wired access in your room (depending on accommodation).

The UK uses British Standard 1363 fused plugs, see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BS_1363, and is running at 230V/50Hz. Please bring a good, fused adapter, a UK power cable, .. for your digital equipment.

Available at your hotel or residence.

Lunch will be provided on all days that there are DevSummit sessions (i.e. not the social day).

Dinners are not included in the registration or room fees. Cambridge is well-equipped with pubs and restaurants catering to a variety of tastes and budgets. We have organized the following:

• Monday - Wildwood Restaurant group booking; final headcount to be taken Monday morning to confirm with restaurant
• Tuesday - Devsummit formal dinner at Christ's College
• Wednesday - TBA

• Sidney Sussex College Web Page

• 2012 Cambridge DevSummit Wiki Page
• 2008 Cambridge DevSummit Wiki Page

• Visit Cambridge
• National Rail
• National Express (bus)
• BAA (airports)

Registration is on the Cambridge Computer Laboratory website. The fee is £65, which covers the costs of lunches, badges, shirts, etc.

You can co-ordinate travel here:

Developers are welcome to invite guests to attend the developer summit, subject to their tolerance for ceaseless hours of kernel-hacking, and availability of space at the venue.