Re: Xen 4.3 release planning proposal

[Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@oracle.com>]

> From: David Vrabel [mailto:dvrabel@cantab.net]
> Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 4:54 AM
> To: Dan Magenheimer
> Cc: George Dunlap; xen-devel@lists.xen.org
> Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] Xen 4.3 release planning proposal
> 
> On 29/08/12 21:53, Dan Magenheimer wrote:
> >
> > Maybe it is time to move to match the well-known highly-greased
> > Linux kernel release process?  This would include, for example, a short
> > window for new functionality and a xen-next for pre-window shaking
> > out and merging (of new functionality) and testing.  As has
> > been pointed out, xen-unstable is, well, unstable for far too long.
> >
> > It may not be necessary to aggressively match Linus' 8-9 week release
> > cycle or weekly rcN releases, but the core process is known to
> > work very well, is reasonably well documented, and will be familiar
> > to many in the open source community.
> 
> I think such a system only works if you have a short release cycle.  If
> the only time to merge new features is two weeks in every 6/9 months
> then that is just far too long and is not very contributor-friendly.

That wasn't my point (though I see I wasn't very clear).

I meant that the part of the release cycle where new functionality
is accepted (the "window") should be a smaller _percentage_ of the
release cycle.  With Linux, it is about 20-25%.  For Xen it is probably
closer to 60-80%.  Once the window closes, the RC's start and new
functionality is put into "xen-next".  At the next window, the
release-Linus (George in this case) decides which functionality
in xen-next is stable enough to be pulled in during the window.

Of course, 18 months is far too long a release cycle for this approach,
and 9 months may be too long as well.  I think a target cycle
of 6 months with a "window" of 6 weeks would be a step in
the right direction
 
> Xen doesn't have the number of contributors or changes that make a Linux
> kernel style process necessary.

Personally, I think that's a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It is too hard
to use or develop on xen-unstable in part because too much is thrown in
(which, as George pointed out, is a result of developers learning that
if it doesn't go in xen-unstable, it will wait for many months).