[Qemu-devel] What's the next QEMU version after 2.9 ? (or: when is a good point in time to get rid of old interfaces)

[Thomas Huth]

 Hi everybody,

what will be the next version of QEMU after 2.9? Will we go for a 2.10
(as I've seen it mentioned a couple of times on the mailing list
already), or do we dare to switch to 3.0 instead?

I personally dislike two-digit minor version numbers like 2.10 since the
non-experienced users sometimes mix it up with 2.1 ... and there have
been a couple of new cool features in the past releases that would
justify a 3.0 now, too, I think.

But anyway, the more important thing that keeps me concerned is: Someone
 once told me that we should get rid of old parameters and interfaces
(like HMP commands) primarily only when we're changing to a new major
version number. As you all know, QEMU has a lot of legacy options, which
are likely rather confusing than helpful for the new users nowadays,
e.g. things like the "-net channel" option (which is fortunately even
hardly documented), but maybe also even the whole vlan/hub concept in
the net code, or legacy parameters like "-usbdevice". If we switch to
version 3.0, could we agree to remove at least some of them?

 Thomas