Re: [Xen-devel] Xen 4.3 release planning proposal

[Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: George Dunlap [mailto:George.Dunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Subject: [Xen-devel] Xen 4.3 release planning proposal
> 
> Hello everyone!  With the completion of our first few release candidates
> for 4.2, it's time to look forward and start planning for the 4.3
> release.  I've volunteered to step up and help coordinate the release
> for this cycle.
> 
> The 4.2 release cycle this time has been nearly a year and a half.
> One of the problems with having such a long release is that people who
> get in features early have to wait a long time for that feature to be
> in a published version; they then have to wait even longer for it to
> be part of a released distribution.  Historically the cycle has been
> around 9 months, but this has not been made explicit.  Many people
> (including myself) think that the 9 month release cycle was a good
> cadence that we should aim for.
> 
> So I propose that we move to a time-based release schedule.  Rather
> than aiming for a release date, I propose that we aim to do a "feature
> freeze" six months after the 4.2 release -- that would be around March
> 1, 2013.  That way we'll probably end up releasing in 9 months' time,
> around June 2013.  This is one of the things we can discuss at the Dev
> Meeting before the Xen Summit next week.  If you have other opinions,
> please let us know.

Hi George --

(Sorry if I missed relevant discussion on this... I'm way behind
on xen-devel.)

Just a thought...

Maybe it is time to move to match the well-known highly-greased
Linux kernel release process?  This would include, for example, a short
window for new functionality and a xen-next for pre-window shaking
out and merging (of new functionality) and testing.  As has
been pointed out, xen-unstable is, well, unstable for far too long.

It may not be necessary to aggressively match Linus' 8-9 week release
cycle or weekly rcN releases, but the core process is known to
work very well, is reasonably well documented, and will be familiar
to many in the open source community.

Dan

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