[For 4.9] Updating https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_Release_Features to reflect support status of new features

[Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@citrix.com>]

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Hi all, (I think I CCed all stake-holders)

to finish off the release documentation for 4.9, I need to add an extra column to https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_Release_Features – because I was travelling, this dropped of my radar. There several decisions to be made:
A) Decide which "features" to add
B) Decide on the status of the feature
C) Deal with status changes of any past features

The first goal would be to decide on A and any new "features" under C. For B, I am OK to add "???" for now and point to this thread, until we have concluded the discussion

Note that I tracked some of this as preparation for getting CNA status.  Items marked with * are not yet in the discussion document that I created for the security team and which we intend to discuss at the summit.

For all of these, the naming convention is "Section in document" > "Feature" : "Support status". The definition of support status is added at the end of the mail: note that the text has not yet been fully agreed, but seems to reflect fairly well how we handled stuff in the past.

== On A / B: I think we should add ==
- Resource Management > Null Scheduler : tech preview or experimental
- Virtual Firmware or PV Bootloader Support (not sure which) >  x86/Boot Xen on EFI platforms using GRUB2*  : ???
- Hardware > ARM/Alternative Runtime Patching (ARM32 and ARM64): ??? [note that this should probably have been added for 4.8, but I didn't add it]
- Hardware > ARM/System Error Protection* : ???
- Hardware > ARM/Wait for Virtual Interrupt* : ???
- Hardware > x86/AVX512/Neural Network Instructions AVX512_4VNNIW* : ???
- Hardware > x86/AVX512/Multiply Accumulation Single precision AVX512_4FMAPS* : ???
- Device Models > DMOP (Device Model Operation Hypercall)  : ???

New Heading:  PV Protocols and Drivers
- PV Protocols and Drivers > pvcalls : tech preview or experimental
- PV Protocols and Drivers > 9pfs : tech preview or experimental
- PV Protocols and Drivers* > sndif (sound device) : tech preview or experimental
- PV Protocols and Drivers* > displif (PV display) : tech preview or experimental

Did I miss anything?

== On C ==
- Security > Live Patching - see https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2017-06/threads.html#03039
- Security > Alternative 2pm : Supported – I think we should split this out – it is currently implicitly covered under "Virtual Machine Introspection"

If we introduce a new heading "PV Protocols and Drivers" we should probably list all the common ones as supported in this heading, e.g.
- PV Protocols and Drivers* > default (net, block, console, keyboard, mouse) : supported

There are also USB and framebuffer, which I am not sure whether they should be supported and if not, what their status is
- PV Protocols and Drivers* > USB : ???
- PV Protocols and Drivers* > framebuffer : ???

Suggestions are welcome

Best Regards
Lars

----

## Definitions

### User-facing Support Criteria

 * **Functionally complete:** Does it behave like a fully functional
   feature?  Does it work on all expected platforms, or does it only work
   for a very specific sub-case?  Does it have a sensible UI, or do you
   have to have a deep understanding of the internals to get it to work
   properly?

 * **Functional stability:** What is the risk of it exhibiting bugs?

   General answers to the above:

   - *Here be dragons*: Pretty likely to still crash / fail to work.  Not
     recommended unless you like life on the bleeding edge.
   - *Quirky*: Mostly works but may have odd behavior here and there.
     Recommended for playing around or for non-production use cases.
   - *Normal*: Ready for production use

*  **Interface stability:**  If I build a system based on the current
   interfaces, will they still work when I upgrade to the next version?

   - *Not stable*: Interface is still in the early stages and still fairly
     likely to be broken in future updates.
   - *Provisionally stable*: We're not yet promising backwards
     compatibility, but we think this is probably the final form of the
     interface.  It may still require some tweaks.
   - *Stable*: We will try very hard to avoid breaking backwards
     compatibility, and to fix any regressions that are reported.

*  **Security supported:** Will XSAs be issued if security-related bugs are
   discovered in the functionality?

### Definition of Support Labels

Rather than specify each level above, we have some short-hand labels that we use to denote general answer to the above questions.

# Experimental
 Functional completeness: No
 Functional stability: Here be dragons
 Interface stability: Not stable
 Security supported: No

# Tech Preview
 Functional completeness: Yes
 Functional stability: Quirky
 Interface stability: Provisionally stable
 Security supported: No.

# Supported
 Functional completeness: Yes
 Functional stability: Normal
 Interface stability: Yes
 Security supported: Yes

# Deprecated
 Functional completeness: Yes
 Functional stability: Quirky
 Interface stability: No (as in, may disappear the next release)
 Security supported: Yes


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