Re: Xen 4.4 development update

[George Dunlap <george.dunlap@eu.citrix.com>]

On 14/08/13 17:35, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>>> On 08.08.13 at 18:09, George Dunlap <George.Dunlap@eu.citrix.com> wrote:
>> As discussed elsewhere, I am proposing a 6-month release cycle.  Xen
>> 4.3 was released on 9 July.  That would give us a release on 9 January
>> 2014.  This is fairly close after the Christmas season, so I propose
>> to make the estimated release date later, on 21 January, giving a few
>> extra weeks for the holiday season:
>>
>> * Feature freeze: 18 October 2013
>> * Code freezing point: 8 November 2013
>> * First RC: 26 November 2013
>> * Release: 21 January 2014
> So I didn't see any comments on the proposed schedule so far.
> Hence I wonder how fixed we have to consider that plan at
> this point. I'm asking because from the very beginning I was
> not really in favor of shortening the release cycle, and looking
> at the number of (smaller) items on my todo list, I don't see any
> way to even get just a good part of them done by the proposed
> feature freeze date (taking into consideration that working on
> those items usually is possible only when no other bugs or
> routine work need dealing with).

I think as release cycles get shorter, we have to move into thinking 
more like the Linux "merge windows": you work on your feature, and when 
it's ready, you target it for a specific merge window.  Each release 
will have fewer features, but overall the work should continue at a 
similar pace.

For 4.4, it seems likely that we will have stage one of PVH, host USB 
support, a Linux-based stubdom, a FreeBSD-based libc for minios, vNUMA 
for PV guests, possibly for HVM guests... that seems like a fairly 
feature-ful release.

None of this is set in stone -- if we get to October and it looks like 
4.4 is just "4.3 with some bug fixes", then we can just decide to extend 
the development cycle another few months.

  -George