The sentence explaining the deprecation schedule is ambiguous. Make it clear that a feature deprecated in the Nth release is guaranteed to remain available in the N+1th release. Removal can occur in the N+2nd release or later. As an example of this in action, see commit 25956af3fe5dd0385ad8017bc768a6afe41e2a74 ("block: Finish deprecation of 'qemu-img convert -n -o'"). The feature was deprecated in QEMU 4.2.0. It was present in the 5.0.0 release and removed in the 5.1.0 release. Suggested-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange(a)redhat.com&gt; Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha(a)redhat.com&gt; --- v2: * Use Dan's suggested wording [Daniel Berrange] --- docs/system/deprecated.rst | 9 +++++---- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/docs/system/deprecated.rst b/docs/system/deprecated.rst index 0cb8b01424..f2d5bd8ce1 100644 --- a/docs/system/deprecated.rst +++ b/docs/system/deprecated.rst @@ -3,10 +3,11 @@ Deprecated features In general features are intended to be supported indefinitely once introduced into QEMU. In the event that a feature needs to be removed, -it will be listed in this section. The feature will remain functional -for 2 releases prior to actual removal. Deprecated features may also -generate warnings on the console when QEMU starts up, or if activated -via a monitor command, however, this is not a mandatory requirement. +it will be listed in this section. The feature will remain functional for the +release in which it was deprecated and one further release. After these two +releases, the feature is liable to be removed. Deprecated features may also +generate warnings on the console when QEMU starts up, or if activated via a +monitor command, however, this is not a mandatory requirement. Prior to the 2.10.0 release there was no official policy on how long features would be deprecated prior to their removal, nor -- 2.26.2