This week, interesting discussions on the Java version(s) to be supported by CloudStack, updates on translation, and database changes. Also discussion on the next CloudStack Collaboration Conference, and more. Work on 4.1.0 continues, and there's much to be done before it's ready to ship.

Major Discussions and Issues

Some of the major discussions and issues that have taken place on cloudstack-dev and cloudstack-users in the past week. This is by no means exhaustive, if you need to be up-to-date on all development issues in the project, you'll definitely want to be subscribed to the mailing lists!

Schedule Reminder

Chip Childers has sent out a friendly reminder about the schedule:

Thursday is the last day of this

phase of QA / bug-fix work. We defined it as:

2013-02-28

Docs Completion Target (except release notes and translations) (Docs

may be included in the release after this date, after consensus on

each addition that the inclusion does not reduce release quality).

Release Branch moves to limited updates only (only commits allowed

in would be release blockers fixes, translation updates, etc...)

I'd like to get as many bugs resolved as possible (as well as ensure

that the blockers that Sudha has shared this morning are addressed as

quickly as possible).

After Thursday, we're going to want to move to a very limited amount of

change within the 4.1 branch. Given that, now's the time to knock down

the blockers... but also as many of the other priority bugs as

possible.

If you have 4.1 bugs on your plate, please be sure to try to either resolve them or at least triage/report status.

CloudStack Collaboration Summit

Mark Hinkle started a discussion about the next CloudStack Collaboration Conference, offering to work on a proposal for an event in the spring and fall. Lots of folks have expressed interest, and suggested holding the spring event in Europe rather than North America. The discussion hasn't been resolved yet, so no dates or location have been announced as of yet.

QA Scrum Meeting Minutes

The QA Scrum meeting minutes for 18 February 2013 sent to the mailing list.

Weekly IRC Meeting Minutes

The minutes for the weekly CloudStack meeting have been posted to the list. Note that the community has a weekly meeting every Wednesday at 17:00 UTC in #cloudstack-meeting on Freenode.

Supported Java Version?

Wido den Hollander noted that the master branch wouldn't build on his systems over the last few days. The culprit? Seems to be that some changes have snuck in that want a later version of Java than is in Ubuntu 12.04.

No decision has been reached so far, but there is a case to be made that changing the Java version is a significant disruption to users.

Translation Update

Sebastien Goasguen has sent out an update

Discussion on Database Changes

Last week Rohit Yadav had a Google+ hangout with Alex and Abhi to discuss future of database deployment and upcoming work on creating a new tool called DatabaseCreator that will make database deployments easier. It was decided and enforced on 4.1 and master branch that:

  • create-schema.sql ought not be changed from the version 4.0 schema
  • Any new additions should go into their correct upgrade paths, for 4.2 that would mean schema-410to420.sql and schema-410to420-cleanup.sql
  • It would do rolling upgrade from 4.0, this was enforced in DatabaseUpgradeChecker

Once DatabaseCreator is implemented correctly for 4.2 release, a sysadmin will have power to work on their own upgrade strategies. The workflow would be:

  • System admin uses the tool to take a db dump, upgrade the database, at this stage the new database should be backward compatible with old db.
  • Next all CloudStack management servers are upgraded.
  • The tool is called again to do sanity checks and cleanup any db schema.
Development on DIY SystemVM templates

This week Rohit Yadav and Chiradeep were finally able to configure a veewee project so systemvm template can be built on one's own box using veewee and VirtualBox, Rohit also created a systemvm building jenkins job. The source code exists in tools/appliance and has a README for folks to get started. The default template is based on Debian Wheezy but anyone can change the definition.rb, preseed.cfg and postinstall.sh script to fork their own systemvm templates based on Ubuntu, Fedora etc.

Rohit shared a post with the issues and challenges of setting an automated jenkins build job that would create systemvm appliances and export them to various virtual disk image formats. Using his approach anyone should be able to replicate an automated appliance build job.

Upcoming Events

Jira

The count of bugs for 4.1.0 has actually increased since last week. The overall tally of blocker and critical bugs has increased, with two additional blocker bugs and four more critical bugs (though perhaps not the same bugs as last week). A lot of work is needed to get 4.1.0 into shape before we will be able to release.

Of the remaining bugs for 4.1.0, 99 are currently unassigned.

New Committers and PPMC Members

No new committers or PPMC members announced this week.

Contributing to the Apache CloudStack Weekly News

If you have an event, discussion, or other item to contribute to the Weekly News, you can add it directly to the wiki by editing the issue you want your item to appear in. (The next week's issue is created before the current issue is published - so at any time there should be at least one issue ready to edit.) Alternatively, you can send to the cloudstack-dev mailing list with a subject including News: description of topic or email the newsletter editor directly (jzb at apache.org), again with the subject News: description of topic. Please include a link to the discussion in the mailing list archive or Web page with details of the event, etc.