Xen Project Hypervisor Roadmap/4.5

Rather than try to predict precisely what will make it into what release (which was something of a disaster last release), I'm just going to borrow a term from the Agile world and call all uncompleted features the "Backlog". I'll still track who is doing what, and when we get close, what state things seem to be in.

Release Manager

We confirmed Konrad Wilk from Oracle as Release Manager for Xen 4.5 : see this e-mail thread

Roadmap

As in the past, roadmap discussions will mostly happen on the xen-devel mailing list (see below). The convention is that our release manager will regularly post an e-mail called Xen 4.5 development update on the xen-devel list and that community members respond to it.

4.5 Timeline

We are planning on a 9-month release cycle. Our current estimated dates:

• Feature Freeze: 10th September 2014
• First RC: 10th October
• Release: 10th December 2014

The RCs and release will of course depend on stability and bugs, and may therefore be adjusted as we get closer to the freeze dates. The feature freeze may be slipped for especially important features which are near completion.

Running Roadmap management

See

• Xen 4.5 Development Update (June)
• Xen 4.5 Development Update (May)
• historical 4.4 roadmap discussions

The Process

Tracked items via Xen x.y Development Update mails on xen-devel

If you are working on an item, please respond to the latest Xen 4.5 Development Update on xen-devel. Work-items are tracked in the following format

* <Short description of work item> (<prognosis>)
  <optional: detailed description or comment>
  -  <Name of developer working on the item>

The prognosis is now the likelihood of completion in the 4.5 time frame.

• none - nothing yet
• fair - still working on it, patches are prototypes or RFC
• ok - patches posted, acting on review
• good - some last minute pieces
• done - all done, might have bugs

For example:

* VMware backdoor (hypercall) (ok)
  Needs to be split up and redone
  -  Don Slutz

Other Information about how we manage releases

• General Process
• How the Hypervisor team manages releases
• Release management: Risk, intuition, and freeze exceptions