Hi! For quite some time I'm collecting stuff for stable, pocking various people with questions about stable, etc, so has become somewhat more visible and somewhat annoying too :) Especially when I publish the next stable patch round-up, which has not only become larger when counting individual patches, but also multiplied by now 3 stable series. So I guess you wondered what's going on, what's the buzz is all about, and when this ever stop... :)
Seriously though, I stepped up to maintain -stable series just out of nowhere, just because I had issues with qemu in debian and thought to do something with that, but instead of collecting stuff privately inside debian, I decided to give it a more visible try, to see how it will work out, without understanding how it will be. Meanwhile, next debian stable has been released, codenamed Bookworm, which has qemu version 7.2. And it should be supported for the next 2 years until next debian release. We never had any long-maintained releases in QEMU before, usually the previous series maintenance stopped once next major release is out. Right now there's stable-7.2 and stable-8.0 still in existance even after 8.1 has been released. I should draw the line somewhere, even while so far, the whole stuff has been quite easy (but time-consuming). For now I decided I'll stop publishing stable-8.0 releases. This one had a number of linux-user issues, a big share of which Richard fixed at the very end of 8.1 development cycle. There will be one more 8.0 stable release at least (see below for the details), together with the first 8.1 stable. I think this is more appropriate to drop support for previous stable not with next major, but with first major stable release instead, - this way users have much more choices for smooth upgrade to the next major version. So stable-8.0 will end with 8.1.1. Unless there's a good reason to continue. Speaking of 7.2 (which has its share of linux-user bugs too), - so far I plan to continue maintaining it for a while. So please bear with me, don't be surprised I'll ask about 7.2 backports of something from time to time. I don't yet want to make an official statement about this one, like "it will be LTS supported for 10 years from now", - just like with me stepping in last winter for stable maintenance, it's more like an experiment right now, to see how things will go. Let's say 7.2 is an ELTS series, - not Extended long-term support but Experimental, - both looks big and nice, but there's a tiny detail ;) Qemu is still a fast-moving target, with numerous changes in core areas, so things aren't easily backportable to older releases. Also, it's interesting whenever this whole stable rustling is useful for someone else, who uses which releases, etc. Maybe we can share efforts in this area. Thanks, /mjt Let's see how it goes.
