Re: Xen 4.16 development update

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>]

On 06.10.2021 13:18, Ian Jackson wrote:
> I wrote:
>> Planned release schedule for Xen 4.16 (recap):
>>
>>   Friday 24th September   PASSED        Last posting date
>>
>>     Patches adding new features should be posted to the mailing list
>>     by this cate, although perhaps not in their final version.
>>     (3 weeks)
>>
>>   Friday 15th October                   Feature freeze
>>  
>>     Patches adding new features should be committed by this date.
>>     Straightforward bugfixes may continue to be accepted by
>>     maintainers.
> 
> As previously noted, we have had a lack of review bandwidth which
> means this release will be light on content.  We discussed but
> rejected the possibility of extending the release (beyond Christmas,
> to some time in January/February).
> 
> Under the circumstances, and considering some external constraints, I
> am considering trying to *compress* the release schedule by
> approximately one week.  The feature freeze data would remain the same
> - we need to give people as much time to get things reviewed and into
> tree as we can, but I think we can probably cut a week off the freeze.
> 
> That would look roughly like this:
> 
>>   Friday 15th October                   Feature freeze
> 
>       (2 weeks)

Now that we're here, I of course have given up on any of the pending
non-bugfix patches to make 4.16. But I very much hope 4.16 won't go
out with known bugs having fixes available. Therefore I've pinged (in
some cases again):

x86/CPUID: don't shrink hypervisor leaves
x86emul: de-duplicate scatters to the same linear address
x86/AMD: make HT range dynamic for Fam17 and up
x86/PV: address odd UB in I/O emulation
x86/xstate: reset cached register values on resume
x86/altp2m: don't consider "active" when enabling failed
x86/PV: '0' debug key stack dumping adjustments [at least the first 2]
x86/paging: restrict physical address width reported to guests
x86/PoD: defer nested P2M flushes

In principle "x86: more or less log-dirty related improvements" also
contains a number of bug fixes, but the way this series is stuck
made me not include it in the pings.

I've tried to remember to Cc you on these pings, but I may not have
succeeded in doing so.

Jan

>     Friday 29th October **tentatve**      Code freeze
> 
>       Bugfixes only, all changes to be approved by the Release Manager,
>       on the basis of a (progressively stricter[*]) risk assessment.
>       (2 weeks)
> 
>     Friday 12th November **tentative**    Hard code freeze [*]
> 
>       Bugfixes for serious bugs (including regressions), and low-risk
>       fixes only.
>       (0.5 weeks)
> 
>     Tuesday 16th November **tentative**   Branch off staging-4.16
> 
>       xen-unstable open again - with caveats to avoid release disruption.
>       (1.5 weeks)
> 
>     Friday 26th November **tentative**    Final commits (docs/prep only)
>     Week of 29th November **tentative**   Release
>       (probably Tuesday or Wednesday)
> 
> Ian.
>