[Xen-API] Xen Hackathon XAPI Processa Discussion Notes (feel free to comment)

[Lars Kurth <lars.kurth@xxxxxxx>]

This session was about processes and practices around XAPI and XCP.

Participants: John Garbutt, Jonathan Ludlum, Rob Hoes, David Scott, Lars 
Kurth, Julien Fourgard, Olivier Lambert
Communication
=============
* What is the Roadmap for XAPI and Roadmap process?
* What bugs are there and what is being worked on?
* Is there a way to disentagle the release of XAPI itself
  from XAPI packages? Right now, XAPI releases are not itself
  properly versioned and released which is causing issues
  and confusion in XAPI packages and distributions.
  Solutions could be
** Source/other release of XAPI (outside of package)
** Could just be a tag in GIT
** Should have an identifiable version number

More practical questions
========================
* How do you contribute a patch (not documented)?
* How do you raise a bug (not documented)?
* How does a release happen?

Contributing a Patch
====================
NOW: not documented

SOLUTION: Github and pull requests
(+tagged message or digest on list)

Stuff that needs to happen first
* XAPI iser and dev have to be split
* Proposal for list names: xapi-users and xapi-devel

ACTIONS:
* Jonathan L (draft it today): Document how to contribut(proper Readme 
file / copy onto wiki or new website)
* Dave Scott: document the components - list with name + short desc + 
link to repo + diagram
How do you raise a bug (not documented)?
========================================
NOW: http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Reporting_Bugs_against_XCP
For nor now, list is good enough. But long term want a bug tracker.

ACTION: XAPI team needs to have a discussion about it
Constraints
* Publicly accessible
* Hosted outside of Citrix
* JIRA looks like a good solution, but need to get
  it implemented and needs sysadmin support

Roadmap Planning / Process
==========================
JIRA tickets for features/improvements/bugs? Maybe a little much.

Lars suggested to use something very lightweight: if you focus too much 
on tools you lose sight of the essentials. For Xen HV a high-level list 
and polling status on the mailing list works.
John: as an external developer, John would want to see what is coming 
and where there are opportunities to contribute.
List of desirable items from a community perspective
* Have clarity of what are people working on
* Clarity on what is coming soon (with a view of being able to test)
* Ability to collaborate on what others are working on
* Not start something which somebody else started
* Points in time to facilitate collaborative planning
  (requires a fixed release cadence, or long term predictable
   roadmap)

ACTIONS:
* Lars: set up meeting with James, Richard, DaveS, and Mike
  Bursell to discuss and resolve

What is a XAPI release?
=======================
Problem: confusion on "what is in XAPI packages" (e.g. if you picked up 
XCP-XAPI packages from Debian it is not clear what is in it). Working on 
CentOS-XAPI integration I have no idea what is in the package and thus 
what I need to test.
High level solution:
* Some label + numbering scheme/naming convention in GIT repos
** Something matching major dependencies
** Release (or release notes) defines what combinations
   have been tested
** Some convenience mechanism for distros, such as a
   tarball to download (which excludes the distro package)

QUESTION: should the packaging be separate from distro packaging (which 
includes the ISO)
ANSWER: packaging should be separate; there may have to be different 
models per distro
ACTION:
* Dave socialise with team at home
* JohnG: give techtalk on external viewpoint

API Version
===========
NOW: List on Citrix website in the release notes which is generated from 
source
Issue: it should be clear which XAPI version maps onto APIs

Action: Rob Hoes to send a link to LaTex document in source tree.

Should build the LaTex document, include it into tarball and advertise 
it as part of the XAPI release.

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