[PATCH v4 1/5] docs/about/deprecated: Deprecate 32-bit x86 hosts for system emulation

Hardly anybody still uses 32-bit x86 hosts today, so we should start deprecating them to stop wasting our time and CI minutes here. For example, there are also still some unresolved problems with these: When emulating 64-bit binaries in user mode, TCG does not honor atomicity for 64-bit accesses, which is "perhaps worse than not working at all" (quoting Richard). Let's simply make it clear that people should use 64-bit x86 hosts nowadays and we do not intend to fix/maintain the old 32-bit stuff. Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange(a)redhat.com&gt; Reviewed-by: Wilfred Mallawa <wilfred.mallawa(a)wdc.com&gt; Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth(a)redhat.com&gt; --- docs/about/deprecated.rst | 11 +++++++++++ 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+) diff --git a/docs/about/deprecated.rst b/docs/about/deprecated.rst index 15084f7bea..1ca9dc33d6 100644 --- a/docs/about/deprecated.rst +++ b/docs/about/deprecated.rst @@ -196,6 +196,17 @@ CI coverage support may bitrot away before the deprecation process completes. The little endian variants of MIPS (both 32 and 64 bit) are still a supported host architecture. +System emulation on 32-bit x86 hosts (since 8.0) +'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' + +Support for 32-bit x86 host deployments is increasingly uncommon in mainstream +OS distributions given the widespread availability of 64-bit x86 hardware. +The QEMU project no longer considers 32-bit x86 support for system emulation to +be an effective use of its limited resources, and thus intends to discontinue +it. Since all recent x86 hardware from the past >10 years is capable of the +64-bit x86 extensions, a corresponding 64-bit OS should be used instead. + + QEMU API (QAPI) events ---------------------- -- 2.31.1