[CentOS-virt] Xen Version update policy

Fri Dec 13 00:31:47 UTC 2019
Steven Haigh <netwiz at crc.id.au>

On 2019-12-13 04:54, Kevin Stange wrote:
> I don't want to burden Steven Haigh any, but I wonder if there's a way
> we could combine some of our efforts to make both "Xen made easy!" and
> the Virt SIG Xen easier to manage.

I've been thinking about this for a while. The problem has been the 
workflows between myself and the SIG are so far apart, its hard to look 
at how to merge them.

I have full CI between my own git and packages to the mirrors - which is 
good, but has its down sides. I also don't have the restrictions of the 
CentOS build system to deal with - which is great for my workflow ;)

I'm prepping packages for CentOS 8 now - but its exposing quite a number 
of problems around the main toolsets for Xen - and instead of just 
adding my own patch and moving on (ala Fedora's Xen packages), I'm 
trying to get fixes in upstream where possible.

My todo list currently includes:
1) Replace all #! that include env python to a specific python 
version/binary. ie /usr/bin/python or /usr/bin/python3. The configure 
portions of this are complete, but the scripts need to be altered to 
have the detected python version populated.

2) There's no brctl in CentOS 8. The network scripts need to be 
re-written to use 'ip' instead. To maintain compatibility, the network 
scripts need to support both brctl and ip commands and use whichever is 
present on the system.

3) UEFI support needs to be tested. The preferred UEFI boot method for 
Dom0 is to use grub to then boot Xen - but this needs to be tested.

So while me moving to try and get these fixed upstream is great - it 
should make everyone's job easier in the long term. Although I have the 
same problem as the SIG - there's just not enough people to test / patch 
stuff. The more we deep dive into 4.13, the further away I can see the 
release happening :(

-- 
Steven Haigh

? netwiz at crc.id.au     ? https://www.crc.id.au