Re: [PATCH 2/2] Add -mem-shared option

[Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>]

On 02/12/2019 22.00, Eduardo Habkost wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 08:39:48AM +0100, Igor Mammedov wrote:
>> On Fri, 29 Nov 2019 18:46:12 +0100
>> Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 29/11/19 13:16, Igor Mammedov wrote:
>>>> As for "-m", I'd make it just an alias that translates
>>>>  -m/mem-path/mem-prealloc  
>>>
>>> I think we should just deprecate -mem-path/-mem-prealloc in 5.0.  CCing
>>> Thomas as mister deprecation. :)
>>
>> I'll add that to my series
> 
> Considering that the plan is to eventually reimplement those
> options as syntactic sugar for memory backend options (hopefully
> in less than 2 QEMU releases), what's the point of deprecating
> them?

Well, it depends on the "classification" [1] of the parameter...

Let's ask: What's the main purpose of the option?

Is it easier to use than the "full" option, and thus likely to be used
by a lot of people who run QEMU directly from the CLI? In that case it
should stay as "convenience option" and not be deprecated.

Or is the option merely there to give the upper layers like libvirt or
some few users and their scripts some more grace period to adapt their
code, but we all agree that the options are rather ugly and should
finally go away? Then it's rather a "legacy option" and the deprecation
process is the right way to go. Our QEMU interface is still way to
overcrowded, we should try to keep it as clean as possible.

 Thomas


[1] Using the terms from:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oscjpkns7tM&t=8m