Xen project Mailing List

We're 4 months into our estimated 9-months release schedule, and 2 months away from the scheduled feature freeze. It seems like a good time to take stock of where we are and make sure we're on track for the release.

Below are the features on my list, sorted by how likely they are to be completed. Overall, the set of {completed, on-track} features looks pretty good.

The first question to ask is this this:

1. Are there any features we absolutely need for 4.3 that are not on this list?

Recall that one of the main reasons for the delay of 4.2 was that we didn't have a stable API for libxl, and no one really realized it until after the feature freeze -- I want to try to avoid that this time. :-)

In particular, "Default to QEMU upstream" is a feature we want to make sure to have -- is there anything else we need for that, besides the linux-based stubdom (which is on track)?

2. Are there any features marked "fair" or "at risk" that we think are important enough to intervene in?

Keeping in mind that our options for intervening are basically:

* Getting someone already in our community to spend more effort on it (which may mean less of something else)

* Ask for additional outside resources (e.g., recruiting active users or intermittent contributors)

* Slip the schedule.

I'll respond to this e-mail with my own thoughts.

-George

== Finished features ==

* Default to QEMU upstream (partial)
- pci pass-thru (external)
- enable dirtybit tracking during migration (external)
- xl cd-{insert,eject} (external)
* Persistent grants for blk (Linux)
* Allow XSM to override IS_PRIV checks in the hypervisor
* CPUID-based idle (don't rely on ACPI info f/ dom0)
* Serial console improvements

== Features on-track ==

* PVH mode (Xen & Linux)
* Event channel scalability
* ARM v7 server port
* NUMA scheduler affinity
* Default to QEMU upstream
- linux-based qemu stubdom
* Persistent grants for blk (qemu)
* Scalability: 16TiB of RAM
* vTPM updates
* libvirt/libxl integration (external)
* xl USB pass-through for HVM guests using Qemu USB emulation
* xl QXL Spice support
* Rationalized backend scripts

== Features marked as Fair ==

* Scripts for driver domains (depends on backend scripts)
* xl PVUSB pass-through for PV guests
* xl PVUSB pass-through for HVM guests
* NUMA Memory migration
* Multi-page blk rings (external)

== Features at risk ==

* Remove hardcoded mobprobe's in xencommons
* openvswitch toostack integration
* blktap3
* Xen EFI feature: dom0 able to make use of EFI run-time services
* Guest EFI booting
* Persistent grants for net
* Multi-page net protocol (external)
* V4V: Inter-domain communication
* Wait queues for mm
* xl vm-{export,import}
* PV audio (audio for stubdom qemu)
* IllumOS (OpenSolaris fork) support
* Make storage migration possible
* Full-VM snapshotting
* VM Cloning
* Memory: Replace PoD with paging mechanism

[Xen-devel] 4.3 Planning: Taking stock