[Xen-devel] Xen 4.4 development update

[George Dunlap <George.Dunlap@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This information will be mirrored on the Xen 4.4 Roadmap wiki page:
 http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_Roadmap/4.4

I've just spent some time going through xen-devel, and it looks like
the main blocker we know about is the Windows install BSOD introduced
with the update to qemu 1.6.

I've divided the list of open bugs into "Open" (might be for 4.4) and
"Open, not for 4.4".  If there are any other important bugs that need
to be considered for this release which are not on the first list,
please let me know.

It's probably about time to start looking at "cross-compatibility"
test matrix:

* Migrating from 4.3 to 4.4

* Compiling applications written for 4.3's libxl against 4.4's libxl

Anything else I missed?

The next question is: Once the qemu issue is fixed, how much more
testing do we need before we can be confident we've caught all the
necessary bugs?

I'm inclined to say that if we do one more test day and wait a week,
we should be ready.  Thoughts?

= Timeline =

Here is our current timeline based on a 6-month release:

* Feature freeze: 18 October 2013
* Code freezing point: 18 November 2013
* First RCs: 6 December 2013  <== WE ARE HERE
* Release: When it's ready (Probably by the end of February).

Last updated: 27 January 2014

== Completed ==

* Event channel scalability (FIFO event channels)

* Non-udev scripts for driver domains (non-Linux driver domains)

* Multi-vector PCI MSI (Hypervisor side)

* Improved Spice support on libxl
 - Added Spice vdagent support
 - Added Spice clipboard sharing support
 - Spice usbredirection support for upstream qemu

* PHV domU (experimental only)

* pvgrub2 checked into grub upstream

* ARM64 guest

* Guest EFI booting (tianocore)

* kexec

* Testing: Xen on ARM

* Update to SeaBIOS 1.7.3.1

* Update to qemu 1.6.2

* SWIOTLB (in Linux 3.13)

* Disk: indirect descriptors (in 3.11)

* Reworked ocaml bindings

== Resolved since last update ==

* xl support for vnc and vnclisten options with PV guests

* xl needs to disallow PoD with PCI passthrough

== Open ==

* osstest windows-install failures
  > http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/29
  > http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~xensrcts/logs/24250/
  Anthony investigating
  Blocker

* qemu-* parses "008" as octal in USB bus.addr format
  > http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/15
  > just needs documenting
  Anthony Perard to patch docs

* libxl / xl does not handle failure of remote qemu gracefully
  > Related to http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/30
  > Easiest way to reproduce:
  >  - set "vncunused=0" and do a local migrate
  >  - The "remote" qemu will fail because the vnc port is in use
  > The failure isn't the problem, but everything being stuck afterwards is
 Ian J investigating

* Claim mode and PoD
  > http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/32
  Probably not a blocker, but easily fixed
  status: Patch posted

* Disable IOMMU if no southbridge
 > http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/37

* qemu memory leak?
  > http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-users/2013-03/msg00276.html

== Open, not for 4.4 ==

* qemu-upstream not freeing pirq
 > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/xen/devel/281498
 > http://marc.info/?l=xen-devel&m=137265766424502
 status: patches posted; latest patches need testing
 it hasn't been tested because of the other passthrough issues.

 Not a blocker.

* Race in PV shutdown between tool detection and shutdown watch
 > http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/xen/devel/282467
 > Nothing to do with ACPI
 status: Patches posted, need more work, will be stalled for some time
 The fix is to the Linux side of things.
 Not a blocker.

* xl does not support specifying virtual function for passthrough device
 > http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/22
 Too much work to be a blocker.

* xl does not handle migrate interruption gracefully
  > If you start a localhost migrate, and press "Ctrl-C" in the middle,
  > you get two hung domains
 Ian J investigated -- can of worms, too big to be a blocker for 4.4

* Win2k3 SP2 RTC infinite loops
   > Regression introduced late in Xen-4.3 development
   owner: andrew.cooper@citrix
   status: patches posted, undergoing review. ( v2 ID
1386241748-9617-1-git-send-email-andrew.cooper3@xxxxxxxxxx )

  > andyhhp: my proposed RTC fixes break migrate from older versions of
  > Xen, so I have to redesign it from scratch. no way it is going to
  > be ready for 4.4

* HPET interrupt stack overflow (when using hpet_broadcast mode and MSI
capable HPETs)
  owner: andyh@citrix
  status: patches posted, undergoing review iteration.
  > andyhhp: I have more work to do on the HPET series
  > andyhhp: no way it is going to be ready or safe for 4.4

* PCI hole resize support hvmloader/qemu-traditional/qemu-upstream
with PCI/GPU passthrough
  > http://bugs.xenproject.org/xen/bug/28
  > http://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2013-05/msg02813.html
  > Where Stefano writes:
  > 2) for Xen 4.4 rework the two patches above and improve
  > i440fx_update_pci_mem_hole: resizing the pci_hole subregion is not
  > enough, it also needs to be able to resize the system memory region
  > (xen.ram) to make room for the bigger pci_hole

  status: not going to be fixed for 4.4 either. Created bug #28.

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