Friday 31 January 2014

Re: [RFC] Trusty plans for xen-api/xcp

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 03:23:12PM +0100, Stefan Bader wrote:
> Debian has removed xen-api/xen-api-libs from testing and were thinking about
> removing it completely from Sid as nobody cared about it. Citrix is working on
> some overhaul but have not come forward with something usable, yet.
> When being asked they came up asking whether the build failure could get fixed
> and then the current code be used for Trusty.

Unless somebody steps up to maintain xen-api, I don't think it makes
sense to continue keeping these packages in Ubuntu, given that Debian
have removed them from testing and the existing packages broken (and, it
seems, thus stuck in trusty-proposed). So we should remove them from
trusty-proposed.

If the packages get reinstated in Debian testing before our Debian
Import Freeze, then we can have them in Trusty.

AIUI, our OpenStack packaging uses libvirt and libxen (-4.3?), so won't
be affected. If I'm wrong here, please could somebody point this out
now?

[...]

> So basically throwing the general question into the air what should be
> done with the xen-api* packages: removed (maybe bad as that could
> break upgrades from P), make them compile and decide whether to
> replace nova plugins by libvirt use or keep them and add libvirt use
> or ...?

The right time to drop support for something is in a new release. If
xen-api doesn't ship in Trusty, then I don't think there's an issue with
there not being an upgrade path. As a distribution, we can only pass on
to users what is available upstream. Perhaps we should just add a
release note to say that xen-api is no longer available.

Robie