Re: [Hackathon Minutes] Xen 4.4 Planning

[Alex Bligh <alex@alex.org.uk>]

Ian,

--On 14 June 2013 10:46:31 +0100 Ian Murray <murrayie@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>> As an example of the first, the API changed very significantly between
>> 3.x and 4.1, and 4.1 and 4.2. Some of the API changes were subtle (e.g.
>> what you had to do across a fork()).
>
> But surely, this is your business. This is what you do. Sounds like you
> want API changes to be held back for the entire community so your company
> has to do less work.

I think forward compatible APIs are a good thing. This is not
controversial. I believe there are few people in the Xen community
who think not having forward compatible APIs was anything but a mistake.

>> There's nothing wrong with that, and we have done. However this thread
>> is about development cycles. Critical stuff breaks, we know that.
>> That should happen in the unstable version. Patches that fix critical
>> stuff should be made in the unstable version, not the stable version.
>
> Do *you* test unstable and point out the critical bugs BEFORE it goes
> stable? If you don't, then don't be surprised when bugs crop up...

Yes we do. If you want a concrete example, go search for the migration
wallclock lockup thread this month.

> I looked on your website and couldn't find any download section for
> patches or a pointer to github or anything. I am not a lawyer but I
> didn't get the impression that sticking patches on a mailing list was
> fulfilling ones obligation under the appropriate licence. So please can
> you link from your company website to your github were these patches are
> available.

The fact it is not immediately obvious to you on a marketing web site
does not mean it isn't there. You'll find it in our repo too (though
not as a git repository which is actually what people want).

Saying that, I have no objection at all to making this more obvious,
and will do so. We're proud of what we do with open source.

> One aspect from your previous email I'd like to pickup on, when you
> mentioned KVM not having these issues, are you compiling from the source
> or using a distribution version? If the latter, then I think that is an
> unfair comparison.

We use a distribution version (we run Ubuntu throughout). I'm not
quite sure why it's an unfair comparison. If there was an Ubuntu version
of 4.2.x for an LTS release, we'd be using that.

Are you implying that the STABLE Xen version on xenbits should not be
expected to be as reliable as the same version packaged by a maintainer?
If so, why?

-- 
Alex Bligh