Re: [Xen-devel] Xen 4.1.x security support

[George Dunlap <George.Dunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Sander Eikelenboom
<linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Wednesday, September 18, 2013, 10:39:24 AM, you wrote:
>
>>>>> On 17.09.13 at 19:44, Joanna Rutkowska <joanna@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
>>>>> wrote:
>>> And a somehow more general thought: what most people expect from
>>> baremetal hypervisors, I think, is stability. Unlike the Linux kernel,
>>> the Xen hypervisor does not need to support each and every device
>>> invented on the planet, each and every possible filesystem, or
>>> networking stack, etc. That's, in fact, (one of) the biggest advantage
>>> of a hypervisor over a monolithic kernel. So, why, oh why, such a race
>>> to keep bumping the major version over and over again?
>
>> In fact I'm the (so far apparently only) one trying to stop further
>> accelerating the release schedule from its original 9 month cycle.
>> I don't recall you having chimed in when the release schedule for
>> 4.4 in particular and the shortening of the release cycle in general
>> was discussed on the mailing list. There were arguments in favor
>> of the shortening which I certainly appreciate.
>
>> As a side note - last we bumped the _major_ version was in Spring
>> 2010, so over 3 years ago. But I guess by "major" you really
>> meant "minor", which corresponds to a major release (as opposed
>> to a stable one).
>
> I don't think it's about the version number, but more the number of major 
> changes.
> But i think it's quite clear they are for the better and if you argue you 
> want a small core,
> i think all major changes that affect the core are pretty stable now, so it 
> would be worthwhile to migrate to 4.3.

We have had people report that in the past upgrading was a fairly
painful process, but that in recent releases, upgades have been pretty
painless.  We've added a lot of things to our process to try to make
that the case; the switch to a new toolstack, with explicit API
compatibility promises, was a part of that, as has been the addition
of more extensive regression testing facilities, test days before
releases, and so on.

So it may be worth trying an update to 4.3 -- it may be easier than you imagine.

 -George

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