[CentOS-virt] CentOS 6 Virt SIG Xen 4.6 packages available in centos-virt-xen-testing

On 01/21/2016 09:29 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> This is a community SIG .. and xenproject.org does NOT release XSAs for
> 4.2.  The goal of Xen4centOS was to use an upstream LTS kernel and
> update those as required to stay on an LTS.  Also to do every second
> point release of xen (ie, 4.2, 4.4, 4.6).  All so we are longer term
> than upstream, BUT we have supported code from upstream.
> 
> So, the goal is to use supported code for the longest amount of time the
> upsreams support them.  For xenproject.org .. they support the two
> newest releases.  For kernel.org, they do a new kernel LTS about every 2
> years.
> 
> We don't have 5000 engineers to maintain community SIGs like they
> maintain the distro.  We have to have supported code from upstream projects.
> 
>

So what does this mean ..

xenproject.org supports 4.6 and 4.5 right now. (last 2 releases).

When they release 4.7 then they will support 4.7 and 4.6 and drop
support for 4.5 .. and we will keep 4.6 active.

When they release 4.8, they support 4.8 and 4.7 and drop support for
4.6.  At this point we will release 4.8 as an upgrade to 4.6.

If we want to get XSA patches, that is what we have to do.  And we
certainly want to continue doing security patches.

The alternative is we need dedicated engineers to figure out older
things differ from the supported versions and how to backport code.  As
you move further from the supported version this becomes harder and harder.

If there are people who want to do this .. and if we can be sure they
will do it for the long term, then maybe and older long term support can
be created .. however, it becomes harder to maintain as time goes on.

Xen Project 4.4.0 was released on March 10, 2014 .. so that is basically
2 years on a major version.  That also corresponds to the LTS kernel
time frame.  That is the best we can do and maintain supported upstream
code.

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