Re: [PATCH v2 2/6] docs/about/deprecated: Deprecate 32-bit x86 hosts

From: "Daniel P. Berrangé" <berrange@redhat.com>
To: Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>
Cc: qemu-devel@nongnu.org, "Peter Maydell" <peter.maydell@linaro.org>,
	"Paolo Bonzini" <pbonzini@redhat.com>,
	"Markus Armbruster" <armbru@redhat.com>,
	"Alex Bennée" <alex.bennee@linaro.org>,
	qemu-arm@nongnu.org, "Maxim Levitsky" <mlevitsk@redhat.com>,
	libvir-list@redhat.com,
	"Richard Henderson" <richard.henderson@linaro.org>,
	xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org,
	"Reinoud Zandijk" <reinoud@netbsd.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 2/6] docs/about/deprecated: Deprecate 32-bit x86 hosts
Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2023 18:05:48 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <ZADlfILU11Akp5MT@redhat.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20230302163106.465559-3-thuth@redhat.com>

On Thu, Mar 02, 2023 at 05:31:02PM +0100, Thomas Huth wrote:
> Hardly anybody still uses 32-bit x86 hosts today, so we should start
> deprecating them to stop wasting our time and CI minutes here.
> For example, there are also still some unresolved problems with these:
> When emulating 64-bit binaries in user mode, TCG does not honor atomicity
> for 64-bit accesses, which is "perhaps worse than not working at all"
> (quoting Richard). Let's simply make it clear that people should use
> 64-bit x86 hosts nowadays and we do not intend to fix/maintain the old
> 32-bit stuff.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>
> ---
>  docs/about/deprecated.rst | 12 ++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 12 insertions(+)

Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@redhat.com>

> 
> diff --git a/docs/about/deprecated.rst b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
> index 11700adac9..a30aa8dfdf 100644
> --- a/docs/about/deprecated.rst
> +++ b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
> @@ -208,6 +208,18 @@ CI coverage support may bitrot away before the deprecation process
>  completes. The little endian variants of MIPS (both 32 and 64 bit) are
>  still a supported host architecture.
>  
> +32-bit x86 hosts (since 8.0)
> +''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
> +
> +Support for 32-bit x86 host deployments is increasingly uncommon in
> +mainstream OS distributions given the widespread availability of 64-bit
> +x86 hardware. The QEMU project no longer considers 32-bit x86 support
> +to be an effective use of its limited resources, and thus intends to
> +discontinue it. Since all recent x86 hardware from the past >10 years
> +is capable of the 64-bit x86 extensions, a corresponding 64-bit OS
> +should be used instead.
> +
> +
>  QEMU API (QAPI) events
>  ----------------------
>  
> -- 
> 2.31.1
> 

With regards,
Daniel
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