[Pkg-xen-devel] Bug#738322: RM: xen-api and friends -- ROM; non maintained upstream

[Thomas Goirand]

Package: ftp.debian.org
Severity: normal


Hi,

Writting this message saddens me, but no choice...

Because upstream authors (eg: Citrix) have explained that they cannot
maintain the current version of XenAPI, or upgrade it to a newer version,
we have no choice but to remove completely XenAPI from both Unstable and
Testing. Quoting Euan Harris from Citrix (it's not needed for the FTP
masters to read, however it's useful to have this in a public bug for
future reference):

> the next 5 years.    Unfortunately the changes we had to make to the XCP
> packages to make them build on Debian made them effectively a fork of the
> XAPI Project as used in XenServer at that time, and it is increasingly
> difficult to backport changes from 'upstream' XAPI Project to XCP.
> 
> I previously mentioned a project called 'xenserver-core'
> (https://github.com/xenserver/xenserver-core) which aimed to improve and
> standardize the build and packaging process for XenServer's components.
> As part of project we cleaned up many of the CentOS/RedHat-specific
> dependencies in the packages, and we are now pushing those changes back
> upstream to the main repositories including those of the XAPI Project
> (https://github.com/xapi-project).
> 
> xenserver-core also had build scripts which let us build the packages
> on RedHat- and Debian-derived distributions.   We plan to integrate this
> build code into our main build system, so we hope that we will not see a
> repeat of the divergence that occurred with the XCP packages as we will
> be building (internally) on Debian on a regular basis.    We hope that
> this will mean that our trunk branch and future releases will be much
> easier for packagers to build in future than it has been in the past.
> 
> In summary, the current XCP packages are not in a good enough condition
> to go into Ubuntu Trusty and the trunk XAPI Project is not yet at a point
> where a release can be made.   Typically we do this when XenServer is
> released and the XAPI code has had significant testing and stabilization
> through XenServer's QA process.
> 
> Regrettably, we agree that there is no alternative now but for the
> XCP packages to drop out of the Ubuntu Trusty.   We would like to get
> packages in Debian testing again in time for the next release, but those
> should be based on releases from XAPI Project trunk rather than the XCP
> branches, which should be considered dead.  We don't have the resources or
> expertise to build the packages ourselves, but we are keen to work with
> you (or other Debian maintainers) to fix any Debian-specific problems
> which make our code difficult to package.  As I've explained above, we
> are putting a lot of effort into making the XAPI Project code portable
> and less distribution specific, so we would hope that packaging it for
> Debian will now be much easier than it used to be.

To give a shorter submary: XCP in it's current Debian form is dead, and
may be replaced by xenserver-core when upstream consider it in good enough
shape. It is my intention to work on that when it is available. But in
the mean while, I hereby request the removal of the below packages from
both Sid and Testing:

- guest-templates
- xcp-eliloader
- xcp-storage-managers
- xcp-vncterm
- xen-api
- xen-api-libs

I am currently unsure if we should keep:
- blktap
- blktap-dkms

I would appreciate comments from knowledgeable people like one of the
2 Ian (eg: Campbell, Jackson), or Mike about this. I currently believe
that blktap isn't needed anymore outside of XCP, so unless they oppose
to it, we can delete these packages (if we later need them, I can anyway
upload again using what we have stored in the Git of Alioth).

Thanks,

Thomas Goirand (zigo)