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Development

How XCP-ng is developed.

Development in the context of the XCP-ng project means either to contribute to existing upstream projects, such as the Xen API (XAPI, the Xen project and many other components of XCP-ng, or to develop new software specifically for the XCP-ng project.

Contribution to upstream projects​

Development (as in "write code") in XCP-ng project is mostly made of contributions to upstream projects such as https://github.com/xapi-project/, https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Submitting_Xen_Project_Patches or https://github.com/xenserver/.

For some pieces of upstream software, we have GitHub "forks" at https://github.com/xcp-ng. For others we contribute directly without a GitHub fork and apply the patches directly on the RPMs at https://github.com/xcp-ng-rpms/.

Components we are the upstream for​

Components for which we are the main developers.

Our policy is to upstream everything if possible. However, there are some exceptions:

  • Components that have no "upstream" open source equivalent. xcp-emu-manager (https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp-emu-manager) is such a component that we had to write from scratch because the corresponding component in XenServer, emu-manager, is closed-source.
  • Bits specific to the act of building XCP-ng (various scripts, branding stuff...). The main example is https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp.

How to help at development​

It all depends on your skills and areas of interest so it's hard to tell specifically in advance. It usually starts with a feature that you want, or a bug that is annoying you. Alternatively, having a look at the open GitHub issues and picking one (https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp/issues) can be a way to get started. Even if you don't know where to start, just come and talk with us (see Where discussion happens above).