[Pkg-xen-devel] Xen 4.14 is in Debian unstable | Please test! | Bullseye plans

[Hans van Kranenburg]

Hooray,

-- 4.14 in unstable, yay --

Today the new Xen 4.14 source package was uploaded to Debian unstable,
and the buildds show all green. It replaces Xen 4.11.

If you're running Debian testing with Xen, then expect the change to
arrive on your system in a few days. When using HVM, don't rush and pull
the packages from unstable, since qemu still needs a rebuild to depend
on libxen-4.14 instead of libxen-4.11 (more about that later...).

-- Help testing! --

Any help with testing is appreciated, especially since there are so many
combinations of hardware, different architectures and use cases (using
legacy BIOS or EFI, PV, PVH, HVM, different boot loaders like pvgrub,
pygrub, etc etc).

If you're interested in running Xen 4.14 and you don't want to upgrade
your entire system already, then it's possible to rebuild the packages
for Buster and install that on your system. The master branch of the
packaging [0] should be buildable right away, since it always contains
the last thing that was already uploaded. Work in between happens in
branches.

Remember that it is much easier to fix things now, instead of after the
freeze or release of Bullseye!

-- Bullseye --

In the "The big TODO list" [1], I just cleaned up a bit and made a
section 'Bullseye stuff' at the top. With this date a bit less than 3
months in the future, this is the time to start deciding which things we
actually want to do for Bullseye.

The Bullseye freeze policy [2] tells us that we can have new or removed
binary packages until the soft freeze on Feb 12 2021. After that, we can
still fix bugs.

I put a few things in the list which I personally think would be good to
at least do. The two big-ish tasks in there are:

  1) #921187 Make sure we can start doing bullseye-backports in the
future. This means that we have to have a qemu in Bullseye *now* that
does no longer depend on the versioned libxen-4.x package. Some
preparatory research for this has been done already, we have somewhat of
an idea about how big/difficult the task is, but it's not actually
happening yet. I can pick up the task to start the conversation about
this again, try bringing people together and organize the work a bit
where necessary if it does not happen naturally.

  2) We'd actually like to have Xen 4.15 in Bullseye instead of 4.14,
mainly because it will move the end of security support deadline another
8 months into the future. The upstream release of Xen 4.15 is not
planned yet, but we expect it to happen just somewhere around this Feb
12 freeze date. So, I guess there needs to be a little discussion about
what we want to do. E.g. get an RC into Debian unstable in time to get
test feedback and get the real release in just before or after the
freeze. As long as we have all binary packages with the right names in
place, we can finish all of it after the Feb 12 freeze. This one is for
Ian to coordinate, who's also involved in the upstream release proces.

There are many other bugs and inconveniences and small tasks to do. If
you see something you want to help with or learn more about, do not
hesitate to make some noise and ask for help. Remember, I'm also just
learning stuff by doing it for the first time all the time. This project
is huge and non-trivial, but don't let that hold you back to start
somewhere in a corner and learn new fun stuff.

Thanks,
Hans (Knorrie)

[0] https://salsa.debian.org/xen-team/debian-xen/-/branches
[1] https://salsa.debian.org/xen-team/debian-xen/-/issues/26
[2] https://release.debian.org/bullseye/freeze_policy.html

IRC: #debian-xen @ OFTC
Bugs: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=xen