Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v1] configure: require glib-2.24

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 02:45:38PM +0200, Cornelia Huck wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Apr 2018 14:38:37 +0200
> Olaf Hering <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> > Since usage of g_realloc_n was introduced, glib-2.22 can not be used 
> > anymore.
> > Fixes commit 418026ca43 ("util: Introduce vfio helpers")
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Olaf Hering <address@hidden>
> > ---
> >  configure | 2 +-
> >  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> > 
> > diff --git a/configure b/configure
> > index 6e9b994f21..81760ef45a 100755
> > --- a/configure
> > +++ b/configure
> > @@ -3369,7 +3369,7 @@ fi
> >  if test "$mingw32" = yes; then
> >      glib_req_ver=2.30
> >  else
> > -    glib_req_ver=2.22
> > +    glib_req_ver=2.24
> >  fi
> >  glib_modules=gthread-2.0
> >  if test "$modules" = yes; then
> > 
> 
> Are we ready to give up support for whatever distro is still on 2.22?
> (If yes, can we bump to an even newer glib version?) Or should we
> rather solve this by adding a g_realloc_n implementation for that case?

Version 2.22 was released in Sep 2009, so coming up for 9 years old now.

At some point we should to declare that platforms shipping >= NNN year
old versions of software are not a desirable target for QEMU. What is
our desired NNN value - 9 years feels awfully long to me.

For libvirt we recently decided to become more aggressive[1] in culling old
distros as supportable targets, declaring we'll only support non-EOL
distros (for short life distros), or for long life distros (RHEL, LTS, etc)
the most recent version, and the recent minus-1 for 2 years overlap.

Should we formalize similar guidelines for QEMU to give developers a
guide for when it is reasonable to increase the min required version of
any 3rd party library ?  glib is a mandatory dep, but we've countless
other optional libraries we might wish to increase min versions for too,
and no guide on when it is reasonable todo so.

Regards,
Daniel

[1]   https://libvirt.org/platforms.html
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