Re: [Qemu-devel] RFC: This project needs a stable branch

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

I'm not necessarily sure I agree that a stable branch is the best thing 
to have (verses aiming for never introducing regressions).

I do agree that a bug tracker would be terribly useful for tracking 
regressions.  Bug trackers quickly get out of hand though unless someone 
spends a lot of time keeping them tidy.

Any thoughts on the subject?

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

Julian Seward wrote:
> I am a great fan of QEMU, and have used it more or less continuously
> for the past 2+ years.  Over that time I've installed and operated
> various Linux and Windows guests with varying degrees of success.
>
> The recently released 0.9.0 seems a big step forward in the
> stability/usability department, which is excellent.  But there are
> still residual worries -- for example, qcow2 images corrupted for no
> obvious reason -- which, whilst a boring problem, is important for
> folks like me who want to run VMs 24x7 with the hope of complete
> reliability.
>
> Pretty much all mature projects which have achieved widespread usage
> have one or more stable branches along with the main development
> branch (trunk).  Think GCC, the kernel, KDE, ... the list is endless.
>
> Maintaining a stable branch is extra hassle and overhead, but it is
> the standard way to operate, for reasons which are obvious: the
> majority of users care more about stability, reliability and usability
> than they do about the latest new features, and delivering stability
> from a branch used for bleeding-edge development work is pretty much
> impossible.  That is not, of course, a criticism of the bleeding edge
> developers, since it is they who ultimately drive the project along.
>
> I am writing to propose that a stable branch be made from the 0.9.0
> release point.  The aim would be to maximise stability for (IMO) the
> subset of functionality that has the largest potential user base:
> i386-softmmu + Accelerator and x86_64-softmmu + Accelerator, but
> excluding -kernel-kqemu due to limitations described in
> http://qemu.org/kqemu-doc.html#SEC7.
>
> Subsequent releases of the branch would contain no functionality
> enhancements, but just bug fixes, with the eventual aim of achieving
> 'it just works' status for any x86/x86_64 guest I try to install/run.
> I know that's a tall order, and that 0.9.0 may not be able to supply
> that for all guests.  But it is an important goal to strive for.
>
> My impression is that (at least as I perceive it) the lack of emphasis
> on maximising stability on a stable branch, and the lack of a bug
> tracker, is artificially restricting QEMU's user base, and therefore
> indirectly its long term prospects.  This is a shame, because QEMU is
> a very remarkable and useful project, which should be used (and
> usable) by everybody and anybody.
>
> J
>
>
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