Release manager for Xen 4.5

Release manager for Xen 4.5

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk]

Hey folks,

George has graciously volunteered to hand over the reins for
doing the release management to me.

He is going to enjoy more of the free time coding and such.

I put on the XenHackathon Wiki an slot to discuss roadmap
and what we want to have in Xen 4.5 - but we can also start
discussing it now.

The big question is how long do we want the cycle to be?
Xen 4.4 was eight months, so

 a) did that work for you?
 b) If it did not, would you want to be longer (9 months?)
 c) or shorter (6 months?)

Re: Release manager for Xen 4.5

[Igor Kozhukhov]

On 23 Apr 2014, at 20:17, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com> wrote:

> Hey folks,
> 
> George has graciously volunteered to hand over the reins for
> doing the release management to me.
> 
> He is going to enjoy more of the free time coding and such.
> 
> I put on the XenHackathon Wiki an slot to discuss roadmap
> and what we want to have in Xen 4.5 - but we can also start
> discussing it now.
> 
> The big question is how long do we want the cycle to be?
> Xen 4.4 was eight months, so
> 
> a) did that work for you?
> b) If it did not, would you want to be longer (9 months?)
> c) or shorter (6 months?)

I think release time depend on list of features.
you can try to defile list of features and try to identify time for it.
also - it depend on how feature big/hard to develop.
if you have list with some big features with major changes - with huge delta - will be better to split features to some parts of releases.
also - need to provide support for previous releases - and need time for fixes: back ports if needed.
it based on my experiences in Release/Configuration management.

for example: my test port for xen-43 to illumos based platform has about 9 months and not finished.
but i have limited time to work on it - only by my free time. Without sponsors and helpers this work will be moved to TODO list and probably someone else can try continue it.

but - it is example only for one person with part time work on both sides: with illumos updates and xen-43 updates.

-Igor

Re: Release manager for Xen 4.5

[Jan Beulich]

>>> On 23.04.14 at 18:17, <konrad.wilk@oracle.com> wrote:
> Hey folks,
> 
> George has graciously volunteered to hand over the reins for
> doing the release management to me.
> 
> He is going to enjoy more of the free time coding and such.
> 
> I put on the XenHackathon Wiki an slot to discuss roadmap
> and what we want to have in Xen 4.5 - but we can also start
> discussing it now.
> 
> The big question is how long do we want the cycle to be?
> Xen 4.4 was eight months, so
> 
>  a) did that work for you?
>  b) If it did not, would you want to be longer (9 months?)
>  c) or shorter (6 months?)

I continue to think that the 9-month cycle was quite okay, but the
8-month one (which was planned to be 6) is fine with me too.

As to features, apart from stuff potentially getting requested by
our customers or partners, I think I'm personally intending to pretty
much stay away from adding new functionality (despite there being
quite a number of things I would want to get done) as long as the
big list of security exceptions in docs/misc/xsm-flask.txt hasn't
shrunk significantly. Considering how long dealing with
XEN_DOMCTL_shadow_op alone is taking (admittedly not the
simplest one to start with), I fear that process will extend over the
entire release cycle, even if I was getting help by others. (And of
course it's of no help that the average turnaround on patch acks/
reviews continues to be way longer than it used to be when Keir
was still actively working on the project.)

Jan

Re: Release manager for Xen 4.5

[Lars Kurth]

Congratulations,
do you mind if I draft a post for the blog. This would be the first time 
we have a non-Citrix RC.
I guess you could also do this yourself, but maybe it will be easier on 
you if we do this. But I may include a few quotes from you (we can 
figure this out on IRC)
Regards
Lars

On 23/04/2014 17:17, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
> Hey folks,
>
> George has graciously volunteered to hand over the reins for
> doing the release management to me.
>
> He is going to enjoy more of the free time coding and such.
>
> I put on the XenHackathon Wiki an slot to discuss roadmap
> and what we want to have in Xen 4.5 - but we can also start
> discussing it now.
>
> The big question is how long do we want the cycle to be?
> Xen 4.4 was eight months, so
>
>   a) did that work for you?
>   b) If it did not, would you want to be longer (9 months?)
>   c) or shorter (6 months?)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Xen-devel mailing list
> Xen-devel@lists.xen.org
> http://lists.xen.org/xen-devel

Re: Release manager for Xen 4.5

[Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk]

On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 11:44:05AM +0100, Lars Kurth wrote:
> Congratulations,

Thank you!
> do you mind if I draft a post for the blog. This would be the first
> time we have a non-Citrix RC.

Right :-)j
> I guess you could also do this yourself, but maybe it will be easier
> on you if we do this. But I may include a few quotes from you (we
> can figure this out on IRC)

.. but it might be easier to wait until after the Xen hackathon
as I can also draft up what the roadmap will be?

Or are you thinking more of: "Hey, hello to Konrad. Konrad
is .. bla bla bla .." ?

> Regards
> Lars
> 
> On 23/04/2014 17:17, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
> >Hey folks,
> >
> >George has graciously volunteered to hand over the reins for
> >doing the release management to me.
> >
> >He is going to enjoy more of the free time coding and such.
> >
> >I put on the XenHackathon Wiki an slot to discuss roadmap
> >and what we want to have in Xen 4.5 - but we can also start
> >discussing it now.
> >
> >The big question is how long do we want the cycle to be?
> >Xen 4.4 was eight months, so
> >
> >  a) did that work for you?
> >  b) If it did not, would you want to be longer (9 months?)
> >  c) or shorter (6 months?)
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Xen-devel mailing list
> >Xen-devel@lists.xen.org
> >http://lists.xen.org/xen-devel
> 

Re: Release manager for Xen 4.5

[Lars Kurth]

On 25/04/2014 14:11, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 11:44:05AM +0100, Lars Kurth wrote:
>> Congratulations,
> Thank you!
>> do you mind if I draft a post for the blog. This would be the first
>> time we have a non-Citrix RC.
> Right :-)j
>> I guess you could also do this yourself, but maybe it will be easier
>> on you if we do this. But I may include a few quotes from you (we
>> can figure this out on IRC)
> .. but it might be easier to wait until after the Xen hackathon
> as I can also draft up what the roadmap will be?
>
> Or are you thinking more of: "Hey, hello to Konrad. Konrad
> is .. bla bla bla .." ?
There probably should be two separate posts ... one intro and one roadmap.

Let me see whether I can put something together. It may make sense to 
actually cover the history of why we introduced release managers, what 
impact it made, ...

Lars