Re: [Xen-devel] Xen release cycle revisited

[Julien Grall <julien.grall@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 14/12/17 07:56, Juergen Gross wrote:
> Hi all,
Hi Juergen,

I would recommend to CC committers on that thread, so your thread don't 
get lost in the xen-devel meanders :).
> with 4.10 more or less finished it is time to plan for the next release
> 4.11. Since 4.7 we are using a 6 month release cycle [1] targeting to
> release in June and December.
>
> While this worked reasonably well for 4.7, 4.8 and 4.9 we had some
> difficulties with 4.10: bad luck with security patch timing shifted the
> 4.10 release more towards mid of December. Doing thorough testing of the
> latest security patches and trying to release at least 10 days before
> Christmas seemed to be almost mutually exclusive goals.
>
> So what do we learn from this experience?
>
> 1. Should we think about other planned release dates (e.g. May and
>     November - would that collide with any holiday season)?
>
> 2. Shouldn't we have tried to include the latest security patches in
>     4.10, resulting in the need for 4.10.1 at once?
I am not sure to understand this questions here.

> 3. Should we let the release slip for almost a month in such a case?
The problem is XSAs can happen at any time. Let's imagine we decided to 
release in January, what if a new security was discovered during 
christmas? Are we going to slip the release again?
> 4. Should we try harder to negotiate embargo dates of security issues to
>     match the (targeted) release dates?
Those 4 XSAs was first released under embargoed a couple of days before 
the targeted release dates.
The usual embargo period is 2 weeks. I think it would be difficult to 
request a shorter embargo period because downstream product need time to 
apply/test the security fixes.
> 5. Should we modify the development/hardening periods?
>
> For 4.11 we shouldn't have this problem: while targeted for releasing in
> early June it wouldn't be a nightmare to let it slip into July. 4.12
> however will probably face the same problem again and we should prepare
> for that possibility.
>
>
> Juergen
>
> [1]: https://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2015-10/msg00263.html
Cheers,

--
Julien Grall

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.xenproject.org/mailman/listinfo/xen-devel