[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”padding-1-percent” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]The Xen Project can feel really proud of what it has accomplished in the last year. For starters, we met our goal of issuing bi-yearly releases with Xen Project 4.8 and Xen Project 4.9. We also had the Windows PV Driver Release 8.1.2, and Mirage OS 3.0, which is a unikernel sub-project within the Xen Project. We added a new member, Qualcomm, and saw new contributors coming from Star Lab, Zentific, EPAM, Nokia, and more.
But perhaps our biggest accomplishment this year has been the progress we’ve made toward our one major goal: Creating more efficiency within the project. To enable more efficiency we:
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”2/3″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column column_padding=”padding-2-percent” column_padding_position=”all” background_color=”#ededed” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1/3″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”padding-1-percent” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]All of these efforts have led to more and better collaboration, which in turn translated to more efficiency across the project.
Our leadership teams have been able to tackle a number of problems quickly, that would otherwise have lingered. For example, we automated many manual checks when creating releases and security fixes.
In addition, our security team has added fuzzing capability to our Test Lab. And the wider community has worked together to create some awesome new tech, a few examples being Live Patching and Virtual Machine Introspection.
Our second big goal for the year was growing our contributor base, which will help relieve bottlenecks in our code review process. I’ll explain how we’re tackling that in a future blog post.
We are still adjusting to these changes as a project and recognize that we can always do more to improve our efficiency. But we’re encouraged by the initial results and feel that it makes the experience better for all our contributors — from project leadership to those who are just submitting their first patch.
If you are interested in learning more about how the Xen Project is doing, check out my weather report at our recent Xen Project Developer Summit. If you are interested in contributing to the Xen Project head here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]