Archived/Xen Roadmap/4.3

Proposed timeline

We are planning on a 9-month release cycle. Xen 4.2 was released on 17 September 2012. Based on that, below are our estimated dates:

• Feature Freeze: 25 March, 2013
• First RC: 6 May 2013
• Release: 17 June 2013

The RCs and release will of course depend on stability and bugs, and will therefore be fairly unpredictable. The feature freeze may be slipped for especially important features which are near completion.

Feature list

Below is a list of features we're tracking for this release. If you have updates to a tracked feature you are working on, or are working on a feature and wish it to be tracked, please let me know.

NB: Several of the items on this list marked (external). These are not part of the Xen tree, but are directly related to our users' experience (e.g., work in Linux or qemu) or to integration with other important projects (e.g., libvirt indings). Since all of these are part of the Xen community work, and comes from the same pool of labor, it makes sense to track the progress here, even though they won't explicitly be released as part of 4.3.

Completed

* Linux console improvements
  -EHCI debug port

* Default to QEMU upstream
 - pci pass-thru (external)

Not yet completed

* PVH mode, domU (w/ Linux)
  owner: mukesh@oracle
  status: ?

* PVH mode, dom0 (w/ Linux)
  owner: mukesh@oracle
  status: ?

* Event channel scalability
  owner: attilio@citrix
  status: initial design proposed
  Increase limit on event channels (currently 1024 for 32-bit guests,
  4096 for 64-bit guests)

* ARM server port
  owner: ijc@citrix
  status: Core hypervisor patches accepted; Linux paches pending

* NUMA scheduler affinity
  critical
  owner: dario@citrix
  status: ?

* NUMA Memory migration 
  owner: dario@citrix
  status: ?

* blktap3 
  owner: thanos@citrix
  status: in progress

* Default to QEMU upstream
 - qemu-based stubdom (Linux or BSD libc)
   owner: anthony@citrix
   status: in progress
   qemu-upstream needs a more fully-featured libc than exists in
   minios.  Either work on a minimalist linux-based stubdom with
   glibc, or port one of the BSD libcs to minios.

 - enable dirtybit tracking during migration (external)
   status: patches submitted to QEMU and to LibXL.

 - xl cd-{insert,eject} (external)
   status: intilal implementation submitted

* Persistent grants (external)
  owner: @citrix
  status: Initial implementation posted

* Multi-page blk rings (external)
 - blkback in kernel (konrad@oracle, ?@intel)
 - qemu blkback
  status: ?

* Multi-page net protocol (external)
  owner: ijc@citrix or annie.li@oracle
  status: Initial patches posted (by Wei Liu)
  expand the network ring protocol to allow multiple pages for
  increased throughput

* Scalability: 16TiB of RAM
  owner: jan@suse
  status: Not started

* libvirt/libxl integration (external)
 - Migration
   owner: cyliu@suse (?)
   status: first draft implemented, not yet submitted
 - Itemize other things that need work
   To begin with, we need someone to go and make some lists:
   - Features available in libvirt/KVM not available in libvirt/libxl
     See http://libvirt.org/hvsupport.html
   - Features available in xl/Xen but not available in libvirt/Xen

* V4V: Inter-domain communication
  owner (Xen): jean.guyader@citrix.com
  status (Xen): patches submitted
  owner (Linux driver):  stefano.panella@citrix
  status (Linux driver): in progress

* xl vm-{export,import}
  owner: ?
  status: ?
  Allow xl to import and export VMs to other formats; particularly
  ovf, perhaps the XenServer format, or more.
  

* xl USB pass-through for PV guests
  owner: ?
  status: ?
  - Port the xend PV pass-through functionality to xl.
  - Make sure qemu-based USB with qemu-upstream works
  - Upstream the Linux frontend/backend drivers 

* openvswitch toostack integration
  owner: roger@citrix
  status: Sample script posted by Bastian ("[RFC] openvswitch support script")

* Rationalized backend scripts (incl. driver domains)
  owner: roger@citrix
  status: ?

* Linux console improvements
  owner: ?
  -xHCI debug port (Needs hardware)
  -Firewire (needs hardware)

* CPUID-based idle (don't rely on ACPI info f/ dom0)
  owner: jan@suse
  status: done, to be submitted

* Remove hardcoded mobprobe's in xencommons
  owner: ?
  status: ?

* Make storage migration possible
  owner: ?
  status: ?
  There needs to be a way, either via command-line or via some hooks,
  that someone can build a "storage migration" feature on top of libxl
  or xl.

* Full-VM snapshotting
  owner: ?
  status: ?
  Have a way of coordinating the taking and restoring of VM memory and
  disk snapshots.  This would involve some investigation into the best
  way to accomplish this.

* VM Cloning
  owner: ?
  status: May need review
  Again, a way of coordinating the memory and disk aspects.  Research
  into the best way to do this would probably go along with the
  snapshotting feature.

* Memory: Replace PoD with paging mechanism
  owner: george@citrix
  status: May need review

* PV audio (audio for stubdom qemu)
  owner: stefano.panella@citrix
  status: ?

* Managed domains?