[libvirt] [Qemu-devel] [PULL 25/26] block: Remove deprecated -drive option serial

[Peter Maydell]

On 22 June 2018 at 15:38, Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger at de.ibm.com> wrote:
> So if everyone has adopted we can certainly follow our deprecation policy.
> Now if deprecation breaks some real world cases it makes no sense to
> "insist" on that deprecation policy. Really: If latest greatest libvirt
> does not work 2 weeks before soft freeze I consider this too late.
>
> Why: This breaks MY regression test setup before softfreeze. So I will stop
> testing qemu in the most critical point in time.
>
> If you would come up with your statement (taking deprecation policy more
> serious than users) in the Linux kernel I can pretty much guarantee that
> Linus would call you names.

This is one of those areas where I like to think the QEMU
community is a more pleasant place to be than the kernel :-)

The fact we have a deprecation policy at all indicates that we
are (unlike the kernel) sometimes willing to break things that
previously worked for users; but I think we should be a bit
pragmatic as well. If one of our largest use cases (libvirt)
missed the memo on this one I don't think we do anybody any
favours by sticking to the letter of the rules.

thanks
-- PMM