Re: Deprecating stuff for 4.2

[Vladimir Sementsov-Ogievskiy]

08.11.2019 9:41, Markus Armbruster wrote:
> Vladimir Sementsov-Ogievskiy <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>> 07.11.2019 21:52, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> [...]
>>> Pre-release period, time to deprecate some stuffs :)
>>>
>>> How should we proceed? Do you have something in mind?
>>>
>>> There are older threads about this. Should we start a new thread? Gather 
>>> the different ideas on the Wiki?
>>>
>>> (Obviously you are not the one responsible of this topic, you just happen 
>>> to be the last one worried about it on the list).
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Phil.
> 
> 4.2.0-rc0 has been tagged, i.e. we're in hard freeze already.  Only bug
> fixes are accepted during hard freeze.  We've occasionally bent this
> rule after -rc0 for borderline cases, e.g. to tweak a new external
> interface before the release calcifies it.  Making a case for bending
> the rules becomes harder with each -rc.
> 
> Ideally, we'd double-check new interfaces for gaffes before a release,
> and whether old interfaces that have been replaced now should be
> deprecated.  There's rarely time for that, and pretty much never for
> releases right after KVM Forum.
> 
> So no, I don't have anything in mind for 4.2.
> 
> We intend to tag -rc1 next Tuesday.  To make that deadline, we'd need
> patches, not just ideas.
> 
>> Hi!
>>
>> I wanted to resend, but faced some problems, and understand that I can't do 
>> it in time before soft-freeze..
>> But you say, that we can deprecate something even after hard-freeze?
> 
> See above.
> 
>> Ok, the problem that I faced, is that deprecation warnings breaks some 
>> iotests.. What can we do?
>>
>> 1. Update iotests...
>>     1.1 Just update iotests outputs to show warnings. Then, in next release 
>> cycle, update iotests, to not use deprecated things
> 
> Sounds workable to me, but I'm not the maintainer.
> 
>>     or
>>     1.2 Update iotests to not use deprecated things.. Not appropriate for 
>> hard freeze.
> 
> Unnecessarily risky compared to 1.1.
> 
>> or
>> 2. Commit deprecations without warnings.. But how do people find out about 
>> this?
> 
> Not nice.
> 
> We do it for QMP, but only because we still lack the means to warn
> there.
> 
>> Next, what exactly to deprecate? As I understand, we can't deprecate 
>> drive-mirror now?
>> So I propose to:
>>
>> 1. deprecate drive-backup
>> 2. add optional filter-node-name parameter to drive-mirror, to correspond to 
>> commit and mirror
>> 3. deprecate that filter-node-name is optional for commit and mirror.
> 
> To have a chance there, we need patches a.s.a.p.
> 

OK, I'll send today and we'll see, what to do with it.

-- 
Best regards,
Vladimir