Kevin Wolf <kwolf@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > Am 14.03.2017 um 10:24 hat Thomas Huth geschrieben: >> > - in all areas our legacy code and back-compatibility requirements >> > are threatening to choke forward progress if we don't make serious >> > efforts to get on top of them >> >> ... and don't forget all the code that is in "orphan" state since many >> years... it's often hard to get patches accepted that primarily touches >> files that nobody feels responsible for... >> >> Maybe it's really time for a "spring-cleaning", break with some >> compatibility cruft and do a 3.0 release afterwards ;-) > > If we decide that the situation is bad enough to do this, I'd vote for > breaking not just "some" compatibility for a usual release after three > months, but to take more time for it, completely break with the old > interfaces and declare this a new QEMU that libvirt should have a > separate driver for. And then throw out _all_ of the interfaces that > don't match the design any more that we have in mind, even if this means > a temporary regression in features. > > This means one big cut rather than having every release just slightly > incompatible with the previous releases, which should actually make it > more managable, even though the change is more radical. Of course, "legacy code and back-compatibility requirements" will start to grow back the minute we release new interfaces. Whether a big cut is worthwhile depends on the seriousness of the current situation and the rate of regrowth. There's hope the weeds will grow more slowly around well-designed new interfaces.
