From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: George Dunlap Subject: Re: [Hackathon Minutes] Xen 4.4 Planning Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:43:12 +0100 Message-ID: <51B9DA80.7090107@eu.citrix.com> References: <51B9D08E.4000905@xen.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <51B9D08E.4000905@xen.org> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xen.org Errors-To: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xen.org To: lars.kurth@xen.org Cc: "George.Dunlap@citrix.com" , "xen-devel@lists.xen.org" List-Id: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org On 13/06/13 15:00, Lars Kurth wrote: > This took me a while to post, but given that we are not starting 4.4 > just yet, this may be appropriate now. I may have misrepresented some > stuff as it has been 4 weeks since I wrote these. > Cheers > Lars > > = Purpose of Roadmap = > * Set a vision for interesting features > * Track items > * Help consumers of Xen with their planning > > = Release Models that work well = > There was a brief discussion on two different release models > * Train leaves the station (Linux) > * Release when ready (Debian) > > == Stefano's Proposal == > We should aim to reduce the release cycle to 4 months (or maybe 6 > months as an intermediate step) from the current 9 months. A 4 months > relase cycle should help accelerate development and lead to fewer > patches being queued up. The implications are that we would have to > operate a 2-3 weeks merge window. > > To do this, we would need to resolve a number of issues > * It is likely that code reviews for such a short merge window would > become a bottleneck. We are not sure whether this would be a major > issue : the review bandwith would depend on the patches submitted (and > their complexity) > * [I can't remember who raised this] The concern was raised that we > would not have enough x86 Xen reviewers got a 2-3 weeks merge window > * [Konrad] Stated that in PVOPS for Linux contributions we don't have > a review bottleneck, but we should make sure that the Xen and > PVOPS/Linux merge window don't overlap (as this would require the same > set of people to review patches in two projects) > * The rest of the time (approx 3 months) would be used for stabilizing > the release Why would we need 3 months to do testing for 2 weeks of merging (or 4 months of development, depending on how you look at it), when 6 weeks has been just about right for 9 months of "merging"? I think it takes that long for Linux because it's such a gigantic project. I would think 3 months development / 1 month stabilization would be OK for Xen. I would rather avoid the "merge window" workflow until it becomes really necessary, as it adds all kinds of other issues (e.g., needing something like linux-next to detect and sort out merge conflicts ahead of the merge window). -George