[libvirt] [PATCH-for-4.2] hw/mips: Deprecate the r4k machine

[Eric Blake]

On 11/25/19 9:40 AM, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:

>> Please don't start any deprecation process. This requires certain
>> consultation within my company. Rest assured that everyone's opinion will
>> be taken into account while doing consiltation.
> 
> The idea of having a deprecation process is precisely to
> allow time for people like to provide feedback before any
> deletion takes place. So this is not a reason to delay
> starting of deprecation.
> 
> The process lasts for 2 releases before we delete anything:
> 
>    https://qemu.weilnetz.de/doc/qemu-doc.html#Deprecated-features
> 
> When we start the clock now, it is deprecated when 5.0 releases
> in April 2020, and still deprecated with 5.1 in August 2020.
> 
> The code won't be deleted until Sep 2020 when 5.2 dev cycle opens,
> and there's still time to undelete it right up until the 5.2 feature
> freeze in late Oct 2020. That's 11 months away, which is plenty of
> time for feedback IMHO.

And that's the soonest it could be removed. If your consultation reports 
back that it is still needed, we can reverse the decision to deprecate 
or extend the deprecation to last longer, as needed, rather than blindly 
removing at the first possible moment.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3226
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org