Package Stable KVM/QEMU Releases
The kvm/qemu upstream community is changing their release practices.
QEMU and KVM are two separate projects. Traditionally, KVM upstream has released a tarball which included a snapshot of QEMU from its source repository for the userspace virtualization pieces, plus a snapshot of the kvm kernel module source code.
This re-packaging of QEMU was necessary because QEMU was mostly unmaintained as a project and did not release regularly. However, this has changed recently, as it now has an active maintainer, and has moved to a time-based release schedule.
As such, upstream KVM will no longer be re-packaging VCS snapshots of QEMU. KVM releases should only contain the kernel module.
We will need to do a few things in Ubuntu to handle this properly in Karmic. We're going to need to clean up the QEMU package a bit as it stands in Universe and will need to be moved to Main. The kvm package should either then depend on QEMU, or perhaps subsume it entirely. The kvm-source package should be basically the same--a dkms build of the kvm module source code.
Furthermore, I strongly believe that Ubuntu should be tracking the "stable" git tree as established by the KVM and QEMU maintainers. I would like to basically freeze kvm/qemu on the latest stable release some time around Karmic Feature Freeze. There after, I'd like to sync all of the *bug fixes* as applied to that stable tree up until Beta Freeze.
In this way, I hope to keep KVM/QEMU as absolutely stable as possible, and very close to the upstream code for maintenance reasons.
:-Dustin
Blueprint information
- Status:
- Complete
- Approver:
- Rick Clark
- Priority:
- Low
- Drafter:
- Dustin Kirkland
- Direction:
- Approved
- Assignee:
- Dustin Kirkland
- Definition:
- Approved
- Series goal:
- Proposed for karmic
- Implementation:
-
Implemented
- Milestone target:
-
karmic-alpha-5
- Started by
- Dustin Kirkland
- Completed by
- Dustin Kirkland
Whiteboard
= Status =
* qemu-kvm is available in Universe, needs MIR promotion to Main
-- Dustin Kirkland
-------
Discussion Points:
* Suggest a kvm release for karmic
* Suggest a qemu release for karmic
* Future of kvm-source ... should this be pushed into Ubuntu's kernel, or leave it as bleeding edge?
* Move qemu into main
* stable branches of kvm/qemu
* sync with stable branches up until beta freeze?
-- Dustin Kirkland
FYI here's fedora's approach to the combined packaging: https:/
-- pixelpapst