Re: Xen 4.2 Release Plan / TODO

[Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>]

On 20/06/12 12:29, Ian Campbell wrote:
> A bit late this week, due to my being on vacation. Normal Monday
> service should be resumed next week.
>
> Plan for a 4.2 release:
> http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2012-03/msg00793.html
>
> The time line is as follows:
>
> 19 March        -- TODO list locked down
> 2 April         -- Feature Freeze
>                                                 << WE ARE HERE
> When It's Ready -- First release candidate
> Weekly          -- RCN+1 until release
>
> The updated TODO list follows.
>
> If you are aware of any bugs which must/should be fixed for 4.2 then
> please reply to this thread (otherwise I may not remember to pick them
> up next week)
>
> As well as [BUG]s I've also started tracking things to [CHECK] before
> the release. These are basically for things which we ought to confirm
> during the RC cycles e.g. things which are not covered by automated
> testing.
>
> Per the release plan a strong case will now have to be made as to why
> new items should be added to the list, especially as a blocker, rather
> than deferred to 4.3.
>
> hypervisor, blockers:
>
>     * None

Not certain if this is a blocker or nice-to-have, but we have identified
a regression with Xen's ability to boot, suppectedly due to c/s
25336:edd7c7ad1ad2 "x86: adjust handling of interrupts coming in via
legacy vectors" on AMD hardware with an MP-BIOS bug claiming that the
PIT is not connected through the IO-APIC.  Fixing this is next on my
todo list, and I hope to have a solution available by the end of the week.

~Andrew

>  
> tools, blockers:
>
>     * libxl stable API -- we would like 4.2 to define a stable API
>       which downstream's can start to rely on not changing. Aspects of
>       this are:
>
>         * Interfaces which may need to be async:
>
>             * libxl_domain_suspend. Move xc_domain_save/restore into a
>               separate process (Ian Jackson, patches reviews and reposted).
>
>             * libxl_device_{disk,nic,vkb,add,pci}_add (and
>               remove). (Roger Pau Monné, patches posted for disk & nic, vkb
>               trivial, not looked at pci yet)
>
>         * LIBXL_NIC_TYPE enum names are confusing. (Roger, included in
>           calling hotplug scripts series)
>
>         * use libxl_cpumap for b_info.avail_cpus instead of an int,
>           this allows setting more than 31 CPUS (Yang Z Zhang, patches
>           posted, awaiting a repost)
>
>         * use an enum for VGA interface type (e.g. Cirrus,
>           StdVGA). Allows for QXL support (in 4.3). (Zhou Peng,
>           awaiting repost)
>
>     * xl compatibility with xm:
>
>         * [BUG] cannot create an empty CD-ROM drive on HVM guest,
>           reported by Fabio Fantoni in <4F9672DD.2080902@tiscali.it>
>
>         * does not automatically try to select a (set of) node(s) on
>           which to create a VM and pin its vcpus there. (Dario
>           Faggioli, v2 posted)
>
>     * More formally deprecate xm/xend. Manpage patches already in
>       tree. Needs release noting and communication around -rc1 to
>       remind people to test xl.
>
>     * calling hotplug scripts from xl (Linux and NetBSD) (Roger Pau
>       Monné, v6 posted, awaiting review)
>
>     * Block script support -- follows on from hotplug script (Roger
>       Pau Monné, "just be a matter of removing an "if"")
>
>     * Adjustments needed for qdisk backend to work on non-pvops Linux.
>       "qemu/xendisk: set maximum number of grants to be used" (Jan
>       Beulich, patch committed to qemu-xen-upstream, pending for
>       qemu-xen-traditional)
>
>     * [CHECK] Confirm that migration from Xen 4.1 -> 4.2 works.
>
>     * [BUG] LIBLEAFDIR et al and libfsimage do the wrong thing on
>       modern Debian/Ubuntu w/ multiarch capabilities (Matt Wilson,
>       patch posted)
>
>     * [CHECK] Test stub domains work with xl.
>
> hypervisor, nice to have:
>
>     * PoD performance improvements (George Dunlap, and reviewed
>       awaiting repost)
>
> tools, nice to have:
>
>     * xl compatibility with xm:
>
>         * Accept "xl cr /dev/null param=value" to provide all config
>           on the command line (W. Michael Petullo, patch posted)
>
>     * libxl stable API
>
>         * libxl_wait_for_free_memory/libxl_wait_for_memory_target.
>           Interface needs an overhaul, related to
>           locking/serialization over domain create. IanJ to add note
>           about this interface being substandard but otherwise defer
>           to 4.3.
>
>         * Interfaces which may need to be async:
>
>             * libxl_cdrom_insert. Should be easy once
>               disk_{add,remove} done. This is basically a helper
>               function and its functionality can be implemented in
>               terms of the libxl_disk_* interfaces. If this is not
>               done in time we should document as a substandard
>               interface which is subject to change post 4.2.
>
>     * xl.cfg(5) documentation patch for qemu-upstream
>       videoram/videomem support:
>       http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2012-05/msg00250.html
>       qemu-upstream doesn't support specifying videomem size for the
>       HVM guest cirrus/stdvga.  (but this works with
>       qemu-xen-traditional). (Pasi Kärkkäinen)
>
>     * qemu-upstream for NetBSD (Roger, patch commited to NetBSD
>       kernel, awaiting approval, DONE as far as Xen 4.2 is concerned)
>
>     * [BUG] long stop during the guest boot process with qcow image,
>       reported by Intel: http://bugzilla.xen.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1821
>
>     * [BUG] vcpu-set doesn't take effect on guest, reported by Intel:
>       http://bugzilla.xen.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1822
>
>     * Load blktap driver from xencommons initscript if available, thread at:
>       <db614e92faf743e20b3f.1337096977@kodo2>. To be fixed more
>       properly in 4.3. (Patch posted, discussion, plan to take simple
>       xencommons patch for 4.2 and revist for 4.3)
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Andrew Cooper - Dom0 Kernel Engineer, Citrix XenServer
T: +44 (0)1223 225 900, http://www.citrix.com




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