Re: [Qemu-devel] Drop support for 32bit hosts in qemu?

[Alex Bennée]

Thomas Huth <address@hidden> writes:

> On 27.06.2018 09:57, Markus Armbruster wrote:
>> Thomas Huth <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> On 27.06.2018 08:51, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
>> [...]
>>>> Drop support for 32bit hosts in qemu?
>>>
>>> I guess the only way to answer that question reliably is to send a patch
>>> to mark 32-bit hosts as deprecated...
>>>
>>> Anyway, you still have got to fix that problem with -m32 now somehow
>>> since we certainly can not drop 32-bit immediately.
>>
>> We certainly can if we want to.
>>
>> Our formal deprecation policy codifies our compromise between the need
>> to evolve QEMU and the need of its users for stable external interfaces.
>>
>> "Compiles on host X" is also a need, but it's a different one.
>> Evidence: "Supported build platforms" has its own appendix, separate
>> from "Deprecated features".  It's mum on 32-bit hosts.
>
> Theoretically I'd agree, but actually it's more than that: If we drop
> support for 32-bit hosts, we could also drop the qemu-system-i386,
> qemu-system-ppc and qemu-system-arm targets, since qemu-system-x86_64,
> qemu-system-ppc64 and qemu-system-aarch64 are a clear superset of
> these.

Hmm not quite - not building on HOST != not wanting to run GUEST

While I'm unlikely to build on a 32 bit ARM system I run 32 bit guests
all the time.

> But that would also mean a change of the user interface, since the name
> of the executable changes, and at least for ppc, there are also subtle
> differences (different default machine type, different default CPU types).
>
>  Thomas


--
Alex Bennée