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

[Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>]

On 27.06.2018 09:57, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> 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.
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