Re: [Qemu-devel] What's the next QEMU version after 2.9 ? (or: when is a good point in time to get rid of old interfaces)

[John Snow]

On 03/08/2017 03:26 AM, Thomas Huth wrote:
> 
>  Hi everybody,
> 
> what will be the next version of QEMU after 2.9? Will we go for a 2.10
> (as I've seen it mentioned a couple of times on the mailing list
> already), or do we dare to switch to 3.0 instead?
> 
> I personally dislike two-digit minor version numbers like 2.10 since the
> non-experienced users sometimes mix it up with 2.1 ... and there have
> been a couple of new cool features in the past releases that would
> justify a 3.0 now, too, I think.
> 
> But anyway, the more important thing that keeps me concerned is: Someone
>  once told me that we should get rid of old parameters and interfaces
> (like HMP commands) primarily only when we're changing to a new major
> version number. As you all know, QEMU has a lot of legacy options, which
> are likely rather confusing than helpful for the new users nowadays,
> e.g. things like the "-net channel" option (which is fortunately even
> hardly documented), but maybe also even the whole vlan/hub concept in
> the net code, or legacy parameters like "-usbdevice". If we switch to
> version 3.0, could we agree to remove at least some of them?
> 
>  Thomas
> 

As others have stated, we need a few releases to deprecate things first.

Maybe we should develop a serious plan to develop some of our legacy
interfaces first.

Maybe 2.10 can introduce a list of things we want to deprecate,
2.11 can be the transition release,
and then 3.0 can cut the cord and free of us our terrible burden?

I have a list of things I want to axe...

--js