New Release Process

New Release Process

[Anthony Liguori]

Hi Ian,

I was hoping you could clarify what the decisions were for the new 
release process that you proposed at the Winter XenSummit.

Your original slides aren't online yet and I'm not sure if the final 
decision deviated from your slides..

Thanks!

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

RE: New Release Process

[Ian Pratt]

 
> I was hoping you could clarify what the decisions were for 
> the new release process that you proposed at the Winter XenSummit.

We decided to try to aim for ~6 week intervals for 3.0.x releases,
stablizing the tree in -unstable then doing the release and sweeping the
code into 3.0-testing. We'll then try and backport critical fixes from
-unstable into 3.0-testing and spin new 3.0.x-y build numbers as
required. Any similarity to the Linux process is purely intentional :)

We've got a bunch of mergeing to do this week and then plenty of
testing... 

There are a couple of bugs I'd really like to see fixed ASAP: 
 * gnttab_transfer: out-of-range or xen frame xxxxx001
 * the various checksum offload issues
 * investigate the reported memory leak with some routed network configs
 * save/restore problem with block devices under load

Ian

RE: New Release Process

[Ian Pratt]

> > I was hoping you could clarify what the decisions were for the new 
> > release process that you proposed at the Winter XenSummit.
> 
> We decided to try to aim for ~6 week intervals for 3.0.x 
> releases, stablizing the tree in -unstable then doing the 
> release and sweeping the code into 3.0-testing. We'll then 
> try and backport critical fixes from -unstable into 
> 3.0-testing and spin new 3.0.x-y build numbers as required. 
> Any similarity to the Linux process is purely intentional :)

Here's my thoughts on how we should kick-off with the new release
process:

It's been over 6 weeks since the 3.0.0 release, and the -unstable tree
is actually looking pretty good right now -- two of the bugs I mentioned
yesterday are now fixed. 

My current inclination is to call a 3.0.1 release Friday/Saturday and
sweep the tree into -testing. Monday morning we'd then incorporate hvm
and the 2.6.15 tree and work flat out to get that fully tested and
stabilized ASAP, so SuSE can pick it up for SLES10.

SuSE have said they are actually going to base their release off 2.6.16,
even though we're still likely to be on 2.6.16-rcX by their freeze date.
One thing we could do to help them is to break with tradition and to
check the 2.6.16-rcX into the tree rather than the most recent stable
release, 2.6.15. This would help get 2.6.16 stabilized quicker, which
would certainly help them. 2.6.16 is already at rc1, which means that
many of the 'rough edges' should have been found, so I doubt we'll be
hurting ourselves too much. This is -unstable, after all.

What do other developers feel about trying to help SuSE out like this?
No doubt we might have to end up doing something similar for RH come the
RHEL5 freeze date. My feeling is that its in the xen community's
interest to have the best possible vendor releases, as the users always
end up coming to our mailing lists to complain :) 

What do you think? Should we stick with 2.6.15 or go to 2.6.16-rc1 ?

Any reason not to call 3.0.1 now? There are a load of bug fixes and
improvements over 3.0.0.

Ian



  

Re: New Release Process

[Anthony Liguori]

Ian Pratt wrote:

>My current inclination is to call a 3.0.1 release Friday/Saturday and
>sweep the tree into -testing. Monday morning we'd then incorporate hvm
>and the 2.6.15 tree and work flat out to get that fully tested and
>stabilized ASAP, so SuSE can pick it up for SLES10.
>  
>
Yeah, this is a good idea.  Many of us were hoping at the Summit that 
3.0.1 would be released ASAP.

>What do other developers feel about trying to help SuSE out like this?
>  
>
In my mind, switching to a higher kernel version is always a good thing 
especially since it gets us closer to being able to start dropping 
patches for upstream merge.

>No doubt we might have to end up doing something similar for RH come the
>RHEL5 freeze date. My feeling is that its in the xen community's
>interest to have the best possible vendor releases, as the users always
>end up coming to our mailing lists to complain :) 
>  
>
Frequently releases are a very good thing.  If we have frequent 
releases, and stay close to the upstream kernel, we shouldn't have to 
worry much about the distro releases.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

>What do you think? Should we stick with 2.6.15 or go to 2.6.16-rc1 ?
>
>Any reason not to call 3.0.1 now? There are a load of bug fixes and
>improvements over 3.0.0.
>
>Ian
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