Xen Project Releases Version 4.20

Oleksii Kurochko <[email protected]> Wed, 5 Mar 2025 19:24:37 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.emulators.xen.devel,gmane.comp.emulators.xen.user,gmane.comp.emulators.xen.announce
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

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Hello everyone,

It's with great pleasure that I announce our 4.20 PR release.

I want to thank the whole community for their efforts in getting this
release published!

*Please find the PR article attached here
<https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/xen-project-announces-xen-420-release
>*

Please find the tarball and its signature at:
https://downloads.xenproject.org/release/xen/4.20.0/

You can also check out the tag in xen.git:
git://xenbits.xen.org/xen.git RELEASE-4.20.0

Git checkout and build instructions can be found at:
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_4.20_Release_Notes#Build_Requirements

Release notes can be found at:
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_4.20_Release_Notes

A summary for 4.20 release documents can be found at:
https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Category:Xen_4.20

- *Arm*
- Support for LLC (Last Level Cache) coloring for performance optimizations.
- Experimental support for Armv8-R.
- Support for NXP S32G3 Processors Family and LINFlexD UART driver.
- To enable Xen towards safety certification, 43 requirements have been added.

- *x86 Architecture:*
- On Intel CPUs, support the Paging-Write Feature.
- AMD Zen 5 CPU support, including mitigation for SRSO speculative vulnerability.
- Improve Xen ability to boot (and reboot) using the default configuration on possibly
quirky EFI firmware.
- Switched the xAPIC flat driver to use physical destination mode for external interrupts instead
of logical destination mode.
- Remove support for running on Xeon Phi processors.
- There has been a substantial overhaul to the way in which boot module handling works (part of the
Hyperlaunch work in progress), and a substantial overhaul to how the 32bit early boot code is built
and linked (part of the UEFI SecureBoot work in progress).

- *Other updates:*
- Fixes in the blkif protocol specification for non-512b sector sizes.
- Security and performance enhancements: The domain builder in libxenguest no longer un-gzips
secondary modules, leaving it to the guest kernel.
- Continued to improve the common/arch code split, including improved bit-operation helpers for bit
scanning and hamming weight.

Aside from the updates mentioned, I would also like to note that we are
still continue working on the PPC and RISC-V ports.

Best regards,
Oleksii

Come join the conversation on Matrix:

XenProject:https://matrix.to/#/#XenProject:matrix.org

XenDevel:https://matrix.to/#/#XenDevel:matrix.org

XenSocial:https://matrix.to/#/#XenSocial:matrix.org

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It's with great pleasure that I announce our 4.20 PR release.

I want to thank the whole community for their efforts in getting this
release published!

*Please find the PR article attached here
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/xen-project-announces-xen-420-release">&lt;https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/xen-project-announces-xen-420-release
&gt;</a>*

Please find the tarball and its signature at:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://downloads.xenproject.org/release/xen/4.20.0/">https://downloads.xenproject.org/release/xen/4.20.0/</a>

You can also check out the tag in xen.git:
git://xenbits.xen.org/xen.git RELEASE-4.20.0

Git checkout and build instructions can be found at:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_4.20_Release_Notes#Build_Requirements">https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_4.20_Release_Notes#Build_Requirements</a>

Release notes can be found at:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_4.20_Release_Notes">https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Xen_Project_4.20_Release_Notes</a>

A summary for 4.20 release documents can be found at:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Category:Xen_4.20">https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Category:Xen_4.20</a>

*Some notable features:*
- *Security Enhancements:*
- During the 4.20 development window, 8 new Xen Security Advisories (XSAs) were published.
- Expanded MISRA C compliance: Integrated ECLAIR MISRA C scanner in GitLab CI, enforcing 90
rules with zero unjustified violations.
- Enabled UBSAN (Undefined Behaviour Sanitiser) by default for x86, Arm64, RISC-V and PowerPC
in GitLab CI.
- Integrated two of our existing fuzzing harnesses into OSSFuzz.
- *Arm*
- Support for LLC (Last Level Cache) coloring for performance optimizations.
- Experimental support for Armv8-R.
- Support for NXP S32G3 Processors Family and LINFlexD UART driver.
- To enable Xen towards safety certification, 43 requirements have been added.

Aside from the updates mentioned, I would also like to note that we are
still continue working on the PPC and RISC-V ports.

Best regards,
Oleksii

Come join the conversation on Matrix:

XenProject: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://matrix.to/#/#XenProject:matrix.org">https://matrix.to/#/#XenProject:matrix.org</a>

XenDevel: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://matrix.to/#/#XenDevel:matrix.org">https://matrix.to/#/#XenDevel:matrix.org</a>

XenSocial: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://matrix.to/#/#XenSocial:matrix.org">https://matrix.to/#/#XenSocial:matrix.org</a>

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