[v3,2/6] docs/about/deprecated: Deprecate the qemu-system-i386 binary

Commit Message

Thomas Huth March 3, 2023, 10:14 a.m. UTC

Aside from not supporting KVM on 32-bit hosts, the qemu-system-x86_64
binary is a proper superset of the qemu-system-i386 binary. With the
32-bit host support being deprecated, it is now also possible to
deprecate the qemu-system-i386 binary.

With regards to 32-bit KVM support in the x86 Linux kernel,
the developers confirmed that they do not need a recent
qemu-system-i386 binary here:

 https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/[e-mail]/

Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <[e-mail]>
Reviewed-by: Wilfred Mallawa <[e-mail]>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <[e-mail]>
---
 docs/about/deprecated.rst | 12 ++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+)

Patch

diff --git a/docs/about/deprecated.rst b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
index f0c1e6b545..a30aa8dfdf 100644
--- a/docs/about/deprecated.rst
+++ b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
@@ -34,6 +34,18 @@  deprecating the build option and no longer defend it in CI. The
 ``--enable-gcov`` build option remains for analysis test case
 coverage.
 
+``qemu-system-i386`` binary (since 8.0)
+'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
+
+The ``qemu-system-i386`` binary was mainly useful for running with KVM
+on 32-bit x86 hosts, but most Linux distributions already removed their
+support for 32-bit x86 kernels, so hardly anybody still needs this. The
+``qemu-system-x86_64`` binary is a proper superset and can be used to
+run 32-bit guests by selecting a 32-bit CPU model, including KVM support
+on x86_64 hosts. Thus users are recommended to reconfigure their systems
+to use the ``qemu-system-x86_64`` binary instead.
+
+
 System emulator command line arguments
 --------------------------------------