Re: [RFC PATCH for-7.1] Remove the slirp submodule (and only compile with an external libslirp)

["Daniel P. Berrangé" <berrange@redhat.com>]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 08:55:19AM +0200, Thomas Huth wrote:
> On 11/04/2022 01.50, Brad Smith wrote:
> > On 4/10/2022 5:06 AM, Peter Maydell wrote:
> > > On Sun, 10 Apr 2022 at 05:51, Brad Smith <brad@comstyle.com> wrote:
> > > > On 4/8/2022 12:47 PM, Thomas Huth wrote:
> > > > > QEMU 7.1 won't support Ubuntu 18.04 anymore, so the last big important
> > > > > distro that did not have a pre-packaged libslirp has been dismissed.
> > > > > All other major distros seem to have a libslirp package in their
> > > > > distribution already - according to repology.org:
> > > > > 
> > > > >             Fedora 34: 4.4.0
> > > > >     CentOS 8 (RHEL-8): 4.4.0
> > > > >         Debian Buster: 4.3.1 (in buster-backports)
> > > > >    OpenSUSE Leap 15.3: 4.3.1
> > > > >      Ubuntu LTS 20.04: 4.1.0
> > > > >         FreeBSD Ports: 4.6.1
> > > > >         NetBSD pkgsrc: 4.3.1
> > > > >              Homebrew: 4.6.1
> > > > >           MSYS2 mingw: 4.6.1
> > > > > 
> > > > > The only one that still seems to be missing a libslirp package is
> > > > > OpenBSD - but I assume that they can add it to their ports system
> > > > > quickly if required.
> > > > I wish I had seen this earlier as our 7.1 release was just tagged.
> > > > 
> > > > I have whipped up a port of 4.6.1 for OpenBSD as it was pretty simple. I
> > > > will
> > > > see about submitting it in a number of days when the tree opens.
> > > How awkward would it be for an end-user who's on OpenBSD 7.1 to
> > > build a QEMU that doesn't have libslirp? (That is, is it easy
> > > and common for an end user to pull in a port of libslirp that only
> > > came along in a later OpenBSD, or would they instead have to
> > > manually compile libslirp themselves from the upstream sources?)
> > > 
> > > (I'm asking here because if it's painful, then we should perhaps
> > > defer dropping our submodule copy of libslirp a little longer.)
> > > 
> > > thanks
> > > -- PMM
> > 
> > They would have to pull down a -current ports tree and build it. No package
> > would exist for the release. It is possible, but not "supported". I have
> > not looked
> > at the CI bits to see how difficult that would be.
> > 
> > Our release cycles are 6 months and the next release will be in the middle
> > of October.
> 
> OK, thanks for the update, Brad ... so I guess we should defer this patch to
> QEMU 7.2 (to be released in december) instead?
> (which would be fine for me - I just wanted to get the discussion started,
> that's also why I've marked this patch as RFC)

Perhaps make 7.1 simply issue a warning message in configure if
the bundled slirp is used, to give people a heads up that they'll
want to install libslirp-devel soon.

We don't need to follow the formal deprecations process for build
deps. Just feels like a nice thing todo if we postpone till 7.2

With regards,
Daniel
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