Re: Stable branch releases?

[Anthony Liguori <aliguori@us.ibm.com>]

Avi Kivity wrote:
> Anthony Liguori wrote:
>> Hi Avi,
>>
>> Since a number of people are using the maint/2.6.29 branch, perhaps 
>> we could start doing releases from it?  For instance, a kvm-74.1, 
>> kvm-74.2, etc. set of releases.  Likewise, when we start 
>> maint/2.6.30, a new set of stable releases could follow.
>
> Yes, I want to do that.

Ok, is there anything standing in the way of doing this?  What would 
prevent us from doing a stable release in the next few days even?  Is 
there anything we can do to help?

>   One question is what to call these releases, though.

I'd like to see it be named kvm-XX.y or something like that to keep a 
close association between what the base release was.  For instance, you 
wouldn't expect HPET support in kvm-74.3 but you may expect it if it 
were kvm-stable-3 or something.

> I'd like to keep the kernel part synced with 2.6.x.y for as long as 
> that's maintained.

How do you deal with maint/2.6.29 right now in the kvm.git tree?  Do you 
sync that with the 2.6.x.y releases?

> Perhaps we can call these releases kvm-stable-x.y (though it would 
> cause confusion with kvm-xx).

If you're just suggesting introducing -stable, it really doesn't matter 
to me.  I don't think it's necessary FWIW.

>   So, users of kvm-stable-x.y would be running the same code as users 
> running Linux-2.6.x.y with the bundled kvm modules.

I think the majority of utility in the release numbers are associated 
with the userspace bits (maybe I'm a bit bias :-)).  I don't think most 
users care about the differences between 2.6.28 and 2.6.29 kernel bits, 
but the different between kvm-74 and kvm-83 is very important feature wise.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori