seabios release planning

[Gerd Hoffmann]

Hi,

qemu 1.7 is almost out of the door.  I want update seabios early in the
1.8 devel cycle.  Time to do resume the release planning since we've
scratched the idea to do a last-minute bios update for 1.7.

I'd like to see a seabios release from the master branch in december.
Ideally we'll put a prerelease into qemu before the final release so we
get some testing.  We could either explicitly tag a release candidate or
just grab a snapshot for that.

Commit pending patches, enter seabios freeze, prepare seabios update for
qemu can be done next week I think.  Then have 2-3 weeks freeze period,
tag final release before xmas.  In case something doesn't go as planned
early january.

Pending patches:
 * my ahci and pci patches sent this week.
 * anything else?

How we wanna call the baby? 1.7.4? 1.8.0?

cheers,
  Gerd

[Kevin O'Connor]

On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 04:13:35PM +0100, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
> Hi,
>
> qemu 1.7 is almost out of the door.  I want update seabios early in the
> 1.8 devel cycle.  Time to do resume the release planning since we've
> scratched the idea to do a last-minute bios update for 1.7.
>
> I'd like to see a seabios release from the master branch in december.
> Ideally we'll put a prerelease into qemu before the final release so we
> get some testing.  We could either explicitly tag a release candidate or
> just grab a snapshot for that.
>
> Commit pending patches, enter seabios freeze, prepare seabios update for
> qemu can be done next week I think.  Then have 2-3 weeks freeze period,
> tag final release before xmas.  In case something doesn't go as planned
> early january.

So that would look like a SeaBIOS feature freeze on Dec 6th and target
release date of Dec 20th.  Works for me.
> Pending patches:
> my ahci and pci patches sent this week.
> anything else?
>
> How we wanna call the baby? 1.7.4? 1.8.0?

I'd say v1.7.4.

-Kevin

[Gerd Hoffmann]

Hi,
> So that would look like a SeaBIOS feature freeze on Dec 6th and target
> release date of Dec 20th.  Works for me.

/me got sick, so with the xmas/newyear holidays being just around the
corner that implies I'll be offline for the rest of the year.

Kevin will most likely tag v1.7.4 nevertheless, but updating the qemu
tree will be delayed until january.

Anyone being hit by seavgabios breaking windows guests can either apply
this patch as workaround ...

http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/299055/

... or just update the seabios submodule to v1.7.4, the rebuild both
bios and vgabios ("make bios; make seavgabios" in roms/).

happy xmas everyone,
  Gerd