Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] hw/i386: Deprecate the machines pc-0.10 to pc-0.15

[Markus Armbruster <armbru@redhat.com>]

Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> writes:

> On 10/05/2017 16:47, Thomas Huth wrote:
>>> So while we can delete pc-0.12, we can't delete associated features needed
>>> by pc-0.12, without complicating RHEL's ability to create its back-compat
>>> machine types. Downstream would have to un-delete the features.
>>
>> So I guess this is why Paolo said that pc-0.12 is still in "use" ... I
>> think removing pc-0.12, but not removing rombar=0 will cause confusion
>> in the upstream code base sooner or later,
>
> I agree.
>
>> so I guess we should rather
>> keep the pc-0.12 machine until we can get rid of it together with the
>> rombar code. We should still mark it as deprecated, of course.
>>
>>> I think tieing removal to major versions is a mistake, unless we're
>>> going to set a fixed timeframe for delivery of major versions. ie if
>>> we gaurantee that we'll ship a new major version every 18 months, that
>>> gives people a predictable lifetime.  If we carry on inventing reasons
>>> for major versions at arbitrary points in time, it makes it difficult
>>> to have any reasonable forward planning.  It is more users friendly if
>>> we can set a clear fixed timeframe for machine type lifecycle / eol
>>
>> IMHO we should have a new major release after we've reached a .9 minor
>> release, but so far it seems like I'm the only one with that wish...
>
> I actually like that, but then you've pretty much guaranteed that you
> _cannot_ remove anything deprecated until 4.0.  You and Daniel aren't
> disagreeing as heavily as it seems, I think.

Even better: drop the '.', and stop worrying about having to wait for
some arbitrary number to come up before you're allowed to do something
;)