Re: Xen 4.15: Proposed release schedule

["Jürgen Groß" <jgross@suse.com>]

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On 25.11.20 14:48, Ian Jackson wrote:
>      Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>,
>      George Dunlap <george.dunlap@citrix.com>,
>      Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>,
>      Julien Grall <julien@xen.org>,
>      Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@kernel.org>,
>      =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=FCrgen_Gro=DF?= <jgross@suse.com>,
>      Paul Durrant <xadimgnik@gmail.com>,
>      Wei Liu <wl@xen.org>
> FCC: ~/mail/Outbound
> --text follows this line--
> Hi.  I've done a little bit of consultation with previous release
> managers, and reviewed various list archives and calendars.  These
> consultations seemed to suggest some folklore that wasn't captured in
> our process doc - hence the proposed patch, below.
> 
> I would like to tentatively propose the following schedule and
> policies for Xen 4.15.
> 
> If you have opinions, please comment as soon as you can so that we can
> have an open dialogue.  Comments must be submitted at the very latest
> by 1700 UTC on Wednesday the 2nd of December.
> 
> Having never done this before, I am particularly interested in
> comments from previous release managers.
> 
> ** DRAFT **
> 
>    Friday 8th January    Last posting date
> 
>      Patches adding new features should be posted to the mailing list
>      by this cate, although perhaps not in their final version.
> 
>    Friday 22nd January   Feature freeze
>   
>      Patches adding new features should be committed by this date.
>      Straightforward bugfixes may continue to be accepted by
>      maintainers.
> 
>    Friday 12th February **tentatve**   Code freeze
> 
>      Bugfixes only, all changes to be approved by the Release Manager.
> 
>    Week of 12th March **tentative**   Release
>      (probably Tuesday or Wednesday)
> 
> Any patches containing substantial refactoring are to treated as
> new features, even if they intent is to fix bugs.
> 
> Freeze exceptions will not be routine, but may be granted in
> exceptional cases for small changes on the basis of risk assessment.
> Large series will not get exceptions.  Contributors *must not* rely on
> getting, or expect, a freeze exception.
> 
> Chinese New Year falls around the 11th-19th of February this year.  In
> my plan above, that falls within the hard code freeze period.  If we
> don't manage to get the tree to an acceptable quality level by the
> tentative codefreeze and release dates above, these dates will slip.
> 
> I have not yet started tracking "big ticket" items, and bugs.  I
> expect to start doing that starting after Christmas.  NB the primary
> responsibility for driving a feature's progress to meet the release
> schedule, lies with the feature's proponents.
> 
> If as a feature proponent you feel your feature is at risk and there
> is something the Xen Project could do to help, please consult me or
> the Community Manager.  In such situations please reach out earlier
> rather than later.
> 
> ** END OF DRAFT **
> 
> Thanks,
> Ian.
> 
>>From b34f4ddace0b8d76d8c340a46288a2db79c99460 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Ian Jackson <iwj@xenproject.org>
> To: xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org
> Cc: Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>
> Cc: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@citrix.com>
> Cc: Ian Jackson <iwj@xenproject.org>
> Cc: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>
> Cc: Julien Grall <julien@xen.org>
> Cc: Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@kernel.org>
> Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2020 13:22:08 +0000
> Subject: [PATCH] xen-release-management doc: More info on schedule
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
> 
> This documents our practice, established in 2018
>    https://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2018-07/msg02240.html
> et seq
> 
> CC: Jürgen Groß <jgross@suse.com>
> CC: Paul Durrant <xadimgnik@gmail.com>
> CC: Wei Liu <wl@xen.org>
> Signed-off-by: Ian Jackson <iwj@xenproject.org>
> ---
>   docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc | 12 ++++++++++--
>   1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc b/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc
> index e1aa1eda8f..a5d70fed67 100644
> --- a/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc
> +++ b/docs/process/xen-release-management.pandoc
> @@ -15,8 +15,10 @@ that they can have an idea what to expect from the Release Manager.
>   
>   # Xen release cycle
>   
> -The Xen hypervisor project now releases every 8 months. The actual release date
> -depends on a lot of factors.
> +The Xen hypervisor project now releases every 8 months.  We aim to
> +release in the first half of March/July/November.  These dates have
> +been chosen to avoid major holidays and cultural events; if one
> +release slips, ideally the previous release cycle would be shortened.

s/previous/following/

Maybe add a reference to the mail thread in the xen-devel archives?

>   
>   We can roughly divide one release into two periods. The development period
>   and the freeze period. The former is 6 months long and the latter is about 2
> @@ -33,6 +35,12 @@ During freeze period, the tree is closed for new features. Only bug fixes are
>   accepted. This period can be shorter or longer than 2 months. If it ends up
>   longer than 2 months, it eats into the next development period.
>   
> +The precise release schedule depends on a lot of factors and needs to
> +be set afresh by the Release Manager in each release cycle.  When the
> +release is in March, particular consideration should be given to the
> +Chinese New Year holidaty which will then typically occur curing the

s/holidaty/holiday/

> +freeze, so the freeze should probably be extended to compensate.
> +
>   # The different roles in a Xen release
>   
>   ## Release Manager
> 


Juergen

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