From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: George Dunlap Subject: Re: Xen 4.4 development update Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 14:09:40 +0100 Message-ID: <52121914.9000502@eu.citrix.com> References: <520BCDDD02000078000EBF26@nat28.tlf.novell.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; Format="flowed" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mail6.bemta14.messagelabs.com ([193.109.254.103]) by lists.xen.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1VBPDu-0002P0-Gs for xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org; Mon, 19 Aug 2013 13:10:18 +0000 In-Reply-To: <520BCDDD02000078000EBF26@nat28.tlf.novell.com> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xen.org Errors-To: xen-devel-bounces@lists.xen.org To: Jan Beulich Cc: xen-devel List-Id: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org On 14/08/13 17:35, Jan Beulich wrote: >>>> On 08.08.13 at 18:09, George Dunlap wrote: >> As discussed elsewhere, I am proposing a 6-month release cycle. Xen >> 4.3 was released on 9 July. That would give us a release on 9 January >> 2014. This is fairly close after the Christmas season, so I propose >> to make the estimated release date later, on 21 January, giving a few >> extra weeks for the holiday season: >> >> * Feature freeze: 18 October 2013 >> * Code freezing point: 8 November 2013 >> * First RC: 26 November 2013 >> * Release: 21 January 2014 > So I didn't see any comments on the proposed schedule so far. > Hence I wonder how fixed we have to consider that plan at > this point. I'm asking because from the very beginning I was > not really in favor of shortening the release cycle, and looking > at the number of (smaller) items on my todo list, I don't see any > way to even get just a good part of them done by the proposed > feature freeze date (taking into consideration that working on > those items usually is possible only when no other bugs or > routine work need dealing with). I think as release cycles get shorter, we have to move into thinking more like the Linux "merge windows": you work on your feature, and when it's ready, you target it for a specific merge window. Each release will have fewer features, but overall the work should continue at a similar pace. For 4.4, it seems likely that we will have stage one of PVH, host USB support, a Linux-based stubdom, a FreeBSD-based libc for minios, vNUMA for PV guests, possibly for HVM guests... that seems like a fairly feature-ful release. None of this is set in stone -- if we get to October and it looks like 4.4 is just "4.3 with some bug fixes", then we can just decide to extend the development cycle another few months. -George