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

[Brad Smith]

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.