Re: [Qemu-devel] Unmaintained QEMU builds

[Anthony Liguori <anthony@codemonkey.ws>]

On 08/11/2010 11:34 AM, Blue Swirl wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Stefan Weil<weil@mail.berlios.de>  wrote:
>    
>> Hi,
>>
>> since several months, QEMU for Windows (and mingw32 cross builds)
>> no longer builds without error.
>>      
> Not true for mingw32, it was building fine here until the latest commit.
>
>    
>> I suspect that the same is true for QEMU on Darwin (lots of errors like
>> darwin-user/qemu.h:149: error: cast to pointer from integer of different
>> size),
>> but I'm not sure here because I have no valid Darwin test environment.
>> Maybe someone can test this.
>>
>> What about these environments? They have no maintainers.
>> Should they be marked as unsupported? Are they still used?
>> Or should they be removed?
>>      
> I compile test mingw32 very often, it's part of my build test setup.
> If the build breaks, I may even fix the problem
>    

But do you do any testing with the Windows build?

Historically, even when Windows builds, it spends large periods of time 
not actually working.  I think Stefan can confirm this.  Much of the 
platform specific code is way behind (like the block layer) and has been 
for many years.

I can't remember the last time someone sent a Win32 enhancement for 
platform code.

Given that it's known to have a lot of issues, I would suggest that we 
schedule Windows host support for deprecation in 0.15.  I would not 
recommend that we remove any of the WIN32 code from the build but 
basically stop trying to make it even build until someone steps up to 
really actively maintain and enhance the Windows port.  I would still 
suggest we take patches if anyone wants to submit them but we should not 
avoid patches that are known to break win32 (unless the fix is trivial).

For instance, I know that some downstreams (like Android) depend heavily 
on Win32 so an official statement of deprecation might cause them to 
push some of their fixes upstream and be more active in upstream 
maintenance.

Regards,

Anthony Liguori

> But perhaps darwin-user should be removed.
>
>