On Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 12:22:24PM +0100, Thomas Huth wrote: > On 08.03.2017 11:03, Peter Maydell wrote: > > On 8 March 2017 at 09:26, Thomas Huth <th...@redhat.com> wrote: > >> 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? > > > > I think if we are going to deprecate and remove options we need > > a clear transition plan for doing so, which means at least one > > release where options are "still works, but warn that they > > are going away with pointer to documentation or similar info > > about their replacement syntax", before actually dropping them. > > Yes, that's certainly a good idea. But as Daniel suggested in his mail, > I think we should also have the rule that the option should be marked as > deprecated in multiple releases first - so that the users have a chance > to speak up before something gets really removed (otherwise the option > could be removed right on the first day after the initial release with > the deprecation message, so there is no time for the user to notice this > and complain). Not sure whether we need three releases, as Daniel > suggested, though, but if that's common sense, that's fine for me, too.
FYI, I didn't put any thought into my 3 releases / 12 months numbers. I just arbitrarily picked them out of the hat, so don't consider it my endorsement of that particular length of time :-) I think 2 is the minimum number of releases we should deprecate for, beyond that, I'm open minded Regards, Daniel -- |: http://berrange.com -o- http://www.flickr.com/photos/dberrange/ :| |: http://libvirt.org -o- http://virt-manager.org :| |: http://entangle-photo.org -o- http://search.cpan.org/~danberr/ :|
