Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v3 0/2] Document deprecated features & support lifecycle

[Peter Maydell]

On 4 July 2017 at 12:14, Daniel P. Berrange <address@hidden> wrote:
> This is a followup to
>
>   v1: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2017-05/msg02390.html
>   v2: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2017-06/msg01286.html
>
> The goal is to clarify to users & app developers what they can expect
> from QEMU in terms of feature lifecycle & any deprecation policy should
> it be neccessary to remove features.
>
> The list of features marked as deprecated was determined by looking at
> the QEMU source for the word "deprecated'. It was then compared with
> the doc Thomas put up at http://wiki.qemu.org/Features/LegacyRemoval
>
> Key differences with the wiki page that Thomas wrote up vs patch 2
> in this series
>
>  - Deprecated features are given a fixed lifespan of 2 releases,
>    rather than listing deletion at a future "major" v3.0.0 release.
>    This ensures that applications like libvirt have a predictable
>    fixed amount of time to react to deprecations.

That's 8 months. Is that enough time for QEMU versions to get into
distros and out to users? (I don't necessarily think it's too short,
but it seems worth thinking about.)

thanks
-- PMM