Xen Project Releases Version 4.19

[oleksii.kurochko@xxxxxxxxx]

Hello everyone,

It's with great pleasure that I announce our 4.19 PR release.

I want to thank the whole community for their efforts in getting this
release published!

*Please find the PR article attached here
<https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/xen-project-announces-performance-and-security-advancements-with-release-of-4.19?utm_content=302230092&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-14706299
>*

Please find the tarball and its signature at:
   https://downloads.xenproject.org/release/xen/4.19.0/

You can also check out the tag in xen.git:
   git://xenbits.xen.org/xen.git RELEASE-4.19.0

Git checkout and build instructions can be found at:
   
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_4.19_Release_Notes#Build_Requirements

Release notes can be found at:
   https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_4.19_Release_Notes

A summary for 4.19 release documents can be found at:
   https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Category:Xen_4.19

*Some notable features:*
  - *Security Enhancements:*
    - Published 13 new Xen Security Advisories (XSAs) to mitigate  
vulnerabilities.
    - Adoption of additional MISRA-C rules for improved code quality.
  
  - *Arm*
    - Introduction of dynamic node programming using overlay dtbo.
    - FF-A notification support

  - *x86 Architecture:*
    - Introduce a new x2APIC driver that uses Cluster Logical      
addressing mode for IPIs and physical addressing mode for      
external interrupts.
    - Deprecate support for XeonPhi in 4.19, with the firm plan to    
remove support in 4.20.
   *PVH:*
     - PVH dom0 has now moved to "supported with caveats" status​​​​​​​
     - PVH/HVM can now map foreign pages, which should for example    
allow QEMU stubdomains to run as PVH
     - Boot time speedup due to the IOMMU changes
     - Don't expose pIRQ support to HVM guests by default.  The feature
(XENFEAT_hvm_pirqs) can now be enabled on a per-domain basis

   *Other updates:*
     - Add a new 9pfs backend running as a daemon in dom0. First user 
is Xenstore-stubdom now being able to support full Xenstore       
trace capability. 
     - libxl support for backendtype=tap with tapback.
     - Increase the maximum number of CPUs Xen can be built for from  
4095 to 16383.
     - When building with Systemd support (./configure --enable-      
systemd), remove libsystemd as a build dependency. Systemd            
Notify support is retained, now using a standalone library       
implementation.
     - xenalyze no longer requires `--svm-mode` when analyzing traces 
generated on AMD CPUs.
     - Code symbol annotations and MISRA compliance improvements.

   *CI updates:*
     - Minimum fixes to rebuild the containers, following the HEREDOC 
problems.
     - Rebuild containers to have testing with up-to-date LTS distros.
     - Few build system checks, and strip the obsolete contents of the
build containers.

Aside from the updates mentioned, I would also like to note that we are
still actively working on the PPC and RISC-V ports.

Best regards,
 Oleksii

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