Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] net: Inform the user about deprecated -net options

[Thomas Huth]

On 15/12/15 18:31, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> 
> On 15/12/2015 18:15, Thomas Huth wrote:
>> On 15/12/15 17:21, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
[...]
>>> For example you could print all DEVICE_CATEGORY_NETWORK devices that
>>> support device_add.
>>
>> I think that would not work since spapr-vlan is not hot-pluggable.
> 
> cannot_instantiate_with_device_add_yet which actually refers to -device,
> not really device_add, so it would work.

I just tried:

(qemu) device_add spapr-vlan
Bus 'spapr-vio' does not support hotplugging

... did I miss something?

>>> The thing is, people are still running QEMU from the command line.
>>>
>>> "-net nic -net bridge,br=virbr0" is still much less of a mouthful than
>>> "-netdev bridge,br=virbr0,id=br -device rtl8139,netdev=br" if all I want
>>> is something I can ssh into.
>>>
>>> It's easy to deprecate things.  It's hard to convince users that it's
>>> worth, and you haven't convinced this user. :)
>>
>> Ok, if you want to maintain that legacy stuff forever - fine.
> 
> I don't want to, but I think we have to.  It would be a good idea to get
> rid of it, but unfortunately it's not a feasible idea IMHO.

If the code gets unmaintainable because there is too much legacy cruft
in it, that's IMHO even worse. At one point in time, you just have to
get rid of such stuff ... but well, maybe the time for the "-net" option
just has not come yet.

 Thomas