Project Repositories

This page explains how Xen Project source code is organized and hosted: the branch structure of the main repository, where the other components live, and how to clone or browse them. See Submitting Patches for how to send patches against these repositories.

The main repository

The primary Xen repository is xen.git. It holds the development branch, the staging branches, and every supported stable branch in one place:

  • master — the development branch, fed by staging.

  • stable-X.Y — a supported stable release series (e.g. stable-4.19), fed by staging-X.Y.

Releases are tagged RELEASE-X.Y.Z; release candidates are tagged X.Y.Z-rcN. The list of currently supported stable branches is on the downloads page.

The staging workflow

Every change, whether targeting the development branch or a stable branch, is first pushed to a staging branch.

This means staging can be ahead of the branch it feeds — check there first if a committed patch does not yet appear where you expect it.

Every change, whether targeting the development branch or a stable branch, is first pushed to a staging branch.

This means staging can be ahead of the branch it feeds — check there first if a committed patch does not yet appear where you expect it.

Other components

Several other pieces of a Xen system are developed or mirrored alongside the main repository.

QEMU

QEMU provides device emulation for HVM guests. See QEMU trees for the qemu-xen and qemu-xen-traditional trees and how they relate to upstream QEMU.

Guest firmware

  • SeaBIOS — legacy BIOS firmware, used with qemu-xen (upstream: seabios.org).

  • OVMF — UEFI firmware, used with qemu-xen (upstream: EDK2).

  • ROMBIOS — used with qemu-xen-traditional; lives in the main tree at tools/firmware/rombios.

Linux

The Linux kernel is not hosted on xenbits. For choosing a dom0 kernel, the recommended branches are the upstream linux-stable tree for general use, and the mainline linux.git tree for development. The Xen subsystem maintainers’ tip.git tree shows what is queued for the next merge window.

Browsing all repositories

The full list of repositories hosted on xenbits is browsable at xenbits.xen.org/gitweb.