Re: [PATCH] docs/about: Automatically deprecate versioned machine types older than 6 years

[Peter Maydell]

On Tue, 30 Apr 2024 at 07:45, Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Old machine types often have bugs or work-arounds that affect our
> possibilities to move forward with the QEMU code base (see for example
> https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/2213 for a bug that likely
> cannot be fixed without breaking live migration with old machine types,
> or https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2018-12/msg04516.html or
> commit ea985d235b86). So instead of going through the process of manually
> deprecating old machine types again and again, let's rather add an entry
> that can stay, which declares that machine types older than 6 years are
> considered as deprecated automatically. Six years should be sufficient to
> support the release cycles of most Linux distributions.

Sounds like a good idea.

> Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>
> ---
>  docs/about/deprecated.rst | 11 +++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 11 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/docs/about/deprecated.rst b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
> index 6d595de3b6..fe69e2d44c 100644
> --- a/docs/about/deprecated.rst
> +++ b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
> @@ -220,6 +220,17 @@ is a chance the code will bitrot without anyone noticing.
>  System emulator machines
>  ------------------------
>
> +Versioned machine types older than 6 years

"more than 6 years old"

> +''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
> +
> +Starting with the release of QEMU 10.0, versioned machine types older than
> +6 years

ditto

 will automatically be considered as deprecated and might be due to
> +removal without furthor notice. For example, this affects machine types like

"further"

> +pc-i440fx-X.Y, pc-q35-X.Y, pseries-X.Y, s390-ccw-virtio-X.Y or virt-X.Y where
> +X is the major number and Y is the minor number of the old QEMU version.
> +If you are still using machine types from QEMU versions older than 6 years,

ditto

> +please update your setting to use a newer versioned machine type instead.
> +
>  Arm ``virt`` machine ``dtb-kaslr-seed`` property (since 7.1)
>  ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
>

Otherwise
Reviewed-by: Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>

thanks
-- PMM