On 17/02/2023 10.06, Markus Armbruster wrote:
Thomas Huth <[email protected]> writes:
...
My view on all this is a bit more pragmatic.
For a human developer, the difference between "dnf install
python-sphinx" and "pip install sphinx" is, in my opinion, close to
negligible. Really no comparison to "git-clone GCC and bootstap it".
You seem to disagree with that.
Honestly, being a Python ignorant, I completely messed up my system with
"pip" already a couple of times, especially if the instructions forgot to
tell me to use the "--user" switch. So yes, I tend to disagree ;-)
For automated builds in general, and distro packaging in particular, the
difference is real, and could even be a show stopper. But who's
packaging bleeding edge QEMU on CentOS 8? I suspect the only automated
builds are our own CI, where the difference is real, but hardly a show
stopper.
If we've got the feeling that nobody out there really builds QEMU on older
long-term distros anymore, then why the heck are we still trying to support
this according to our support statement?
But then I'd like us to be a bit more pragmatic. Is minor and graceful
degradation for systems close to the trailing edge really so
unacceptably terrible that we have to bend over backwards to avoid it?
Let's just get our support statement adjusted - it was written with good
intention originally, but apparently this is causing too much pain, so we
should adjust it instead of suffering in upstream development.
All the angst about CentOS falling off the end of our "supported build
platforms" list is not actually warranted by this series :)
Using the term "angst" for the concerns of your fellows here is quite
cheeky. It's not about "angst", it's about a discussion that our support
policy might need to be adjusted if we do this step. So instead of writing
such sentences, I'd rather would like to see you posting a patch for
docs/about/build-platforms.rst for constructive further discussion instead.
The phrasing of this sentence was ill-advised. If it caused offense, I
apologize.
Ok, thanks. And just to make it clear again: I certainly do not object
dropping the support for Python 3.6 - I just want to make sure that we
adjust our support statement if the current version is causing too much pain
for us. Sorry if I got that across in the wrong way.
Thomas
