Re: [Xen-devel] Xen 4.3 released!

[Ian Murray <murrayie@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
> From: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Ben Guthro <ben@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: "xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, 11 July 2013, 13:29
> Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] Xen 4.3 released!
> 
> On 11/07/13 10:41, Ben Guthro wrote:
>>  On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 9:01 AM, George Dunlap
>>  <George.Dunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>  The Xen Project team is pleased to announce the release of Xen 4.3.
>>> 
>>>  The result of nearly 10 of development, new features include:
>>>    * Early support for ARM 32- and 64-bit architectures
>>>    * qemu-upstream is now the default for VMs not using stub domains.
>>>    * openvswitch hot-plug script support.
>>>    * NUMA affinity for the scheduler
>>>    * xl can now accept several USB devices, rather than only one.
>>>    * XSM improvements.  XSM can now override all IS_PRIV checks in the 
> hypervisor.
>>>    * As always, a number of stability, performance, and security
>>>  enhancements "under the hood".
>>> 
>>>  Detailed release notes, including a more extensive feature list:
>>>     http://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_4.3_Release_Notes
>>> 
>>>  To download tarballs:
>>>     
> http://www.xenproject.org/downloads/xen-archives/supported-xen-43-series/xen-430.html
>>>  Or the git source repository (tag 'RELEASE-4.3.0'):
>>>     http://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=xen.git
>>> 
>>  Hi George,
>> 
>>  Thanks for all the effort in coordinating this release.
>> 
>>  Generally, I prefer to wait until things clear the necessary gates to
>>  get out of the staging-4.3 (or whatever staging tree) before rebasing
>>  our XenClient patches on top of it, as it usually means it passed some
>>  level of automated testing through osstest.
>> 
>>  In this case, the staging-4.3 tree is where the RELEASE-4.3.0 tag
>>  exists, but the stable-4.3 tag seems to be a handful of changesets
>>  behind, despite being released a couple days ago.
>> 
>>  Could you, or others comment on this discrepancy?
>>  Is the fact that the stable-4.3 tree is lagging behind the staging-4.3
>>  branch an oversight, or has it not passed some push gate?
> 
> The last few changes have not passed the push gate.
> 
> Unfortunately, osstest died over the weekend, at the same time that Ian 
> Jackson, who is in charge of it, fell dreadfully ill.  By the time it 
> was noticed, the announcement had already been given to the press.  We 
> had the choice of going through with the release with the last few 
> changes not quite tested, or having an apology on the download page; and 
> we had only a few hours or so to actually make a decision.
> 
> Looking at the changesets, we decided that on the whole the best thing 
> in the circumstances would be to do our own testing and then go through 
> with the release.
> 
> The tester ran on 4.3 for the first time this morning, and there was 
> some issue with the QEMU tag.  That will probably be sorted shortly.
> 
> This has obviously highlighted a few deficiencies in the process that 
> we'll have to fix in future releases:
> 
> * We should remove debug=y in the middle of RCs, to make sure we get 
> good testing without that change made
> * If we're going to do a big announcement, Linux Foundation-style, we 
> need to have things branched, tagged and tested a week before the 
> announcement.
> 
> Any other feedback is also welcome.

Fairplay for getting done what needed to be done. I did observe that in the 
absence of Ian J and step-by-step documentation, the process appeared to be 
somewhat made up as you were going along. I nearly posted at the time to remind 
all involved of the dangers of this. Of course we have all done it, when we had 
to. I didn't post at the time, because I didn't think it would be helpful.

If I was me, though, I'd want it documented well enough that anyone with the 
access and the authority could perform the release.

> 
>   -George
> 
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