Re: Xen 4.3 release planning proposal

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad@kernel.org>]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 05:46:59PM +0100, George Dunlap wrote:
> Hello everyone!  With the completion of our first few release candidates
> for 4.2, it's time to look forward and start planning for the 4.3
> release.  I've volunteered to step up and help coordinate the release
> for this cycle.
> 
> The 4.2 release cycle this time has been nearly a year and a half.
> One of the problems with having such a long release is that people who
> get in features early have to wait a long time for that feature to be
> in a published version; they then have to wait even longer for it to
> be part of a released distribution.  Historically the cycle has been
> around 9 months, but this has not been made explicit.  Many people
> (including myself) think that the 9 month release cycle was a good
> cadence that we should aim for.
> 
> So I propose that we move to a time-based release schedule.  Rather
> than aiming for a release date, I propose that we aim to do a "feature
> freeze" six months after the 4.2 release -- that would be around March
> 1, 2013.  That way we'll probably end up releasing in 9 months' time,
> around June 2013.  This is one of the things we can discuss at the Dev
> Meeting before the Xen Summit next week.  If you have other opinions,
> please let us know.
> 
> I will also be tracking ahead of time many of the features and
> improvements that we want to try to get into 4.3.  Below is a list of
> high-level features and improvements that the Citrix Xen.org team are
> either planning on working on ourselves, or are aware of other people
> working on, and that we should reasonably be able to get into the 4.3
> release.  Most of them have owners, but many do not yet; volunteers
> are welcome.
> 
> If you are planning on working any features not listed that you would like
> to have tracked, please let me know.
> 
> I will be sending tracking updates similar to Ian Campbell's 4.2
> release updates.  I think to begin with, weekly may be a bit
> excessive.  I'll probably go for bi-weekly, and switch to weekly after
> the feature freeze.
> 
> It should be noted this is not an exhaustive list, nor an immutable
> one.  Our main priority will be to release within 9 months; only a
> very important feature indeed would cause us to slip the release.
> 
> Features and improvements not on this list are of course welcome at
> any time before the feature freeze.
> 
> Any questions and feedback are welcome!
> 
> Your 4.3 release coordinator,
>  George Dunlap
> 
> * Event channel scalability
>   owner: attilio@citrix
>   Increase limit on event channels (currently 1024 for 32-bit guests,
>   4096 for 64-bit guests)
> 
> * NUMA scheduler affinity
>   owner: dario@citrix
> 
> * NUMA Memory migration
>   owner: dario@citrix
> 
> * PVH mode, domU (w/ Linux)
>   owner: mukesh@oracle
> 
> * PVH mode, dom0 (w/ Linux)
>   owner: mukesh@oracle
> 
> * ARM server port
>   owner: @citrix
> 
> * blktap3
>   owner: @citrix
> 
> * Default to QEMU upstream
>  - qemu-based stubdom (Linux or BSD libc)
>     owner: anthony@citrix
>     qemu-upstream needs a more fully-featured libc than exists in
>     minios.  Either work on a minimalist linux-based stubdom with
>     glibc, or port one of the BSD libcs to minios.
> 
>  - pci pass-thru
>     owner: anthony@citrix
> 
> * Persistent grants
>   owner: @citrix
> 
> * Multi-page blk rings
>  - blkback in kernel (@intel)

.. and me as well.

>  - qemu blkback
> 
> * Multi-page net protocol
>   owner: ?
>   expand the network ring protocol to allow multiple pages for
>   increased throughput

Multiple people working on this. Ian, me, Annie, and Wei I believe.
> 
> * xl vm-{export,import}
>   owner: ?
>   Allow xl to import and export VMs to other formats; particularly
>   ovf, perhaps the XenServer format, or more.
> 
> 
> * xl USB pass-through for PV guests
>   owner: ?
>   Port the xend PV pass-through functionality to xl.

Well, what about the Linux side? The frontend/backend drivers haven't
really been proposed for upstream.

> 
> * openvswitch toostack integration
>   owner: roger@citrix
> 
> * Rationalized backend scripts (incl. driver domains)
>   owner: roger@citrix
> 
> * Full-VM snapshotting
>   owner: ?
>   Have a way of coordinating the taking and restoring of VM memory and
>   disk snapshots.  This would involve some investigation into the best
>   way to accomplish this.
> 
> * VM Cloning
>   owner: ?
>   Again, a way of coordinating the memory and disk aspects.  Research
>   into the best way to do this would probably go along with the
>   snapshotting feature.
> 
> * Make storage migration possible
>   owner: ?
>   There needs to be a way, either via command-line or via some hooks,
>   that someone can build a "storage migration" feature on top of libxl
>   or xl.
> 
> * PV audio (audio for stubdom qemu)
>   owner: stefano.panella@citrix

Is this a new person? Anyhow, there was a PV audio in pulseaudio as part
of the GSOC.
> 
> * Memory: Replace PoD with paging mechanism
>   owner: george@citrix
> 
> * Managed domains?
> 
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