Hi,
> > > static const TypeInfo cirrus_vga_info = {
> > > diff --git a/hw/display/cirrus_vga_isa.c b/hw/display/cirrus_vga_isa.c
> > > index 84be51670ed8..3abbf4dddd90 100644
> > > --- a/hw/display/cirrus_vga_isa.c
> > > +++ b/hw/display/cirrus_vga_isa.c
> > > @@ -85,6 +85,7 @@ static void isa_cirrus_vga_class_init(ObjectClass
> > > *klass, void *data)
> > > dc->realize = isa_cirrus_vga_realizefn;
> > > device_class_set_props(dc, isa_cirrus_vga_properties);
> > > set_bit(DEVICE_CATEGORY_DISPLAY, dc->categories);
> > > + klass->deprecation_note = "use stdvga instead";
> >
> > Excepr some old OSes work better with this than stdvga so could this be
> > left and not removed? Does it cause a lot of work to keep this device? I
> > thought it's stable already and were not many changes for it lately. If
> > something works why drop it?
>
> Seconded: whilst stdvga is preferred, there are a lot of older OSs that work
> well in QEMU using the Cirrus emulation. I appreciate that the code could do
> with a bit of work, but is there a more specific reason that it should be
> deprecated?
Well, the cirrus has a 2d blitter implementation which I'd rate
problematic from both security and correctness point of view.
Also any guest new enough to still receive security updates can surely
use stdvga instead. The "operating system museum" is IMHO pretty much
the only use case where it possibly might make sense to continue using
cirrus.
Having sayed that maybe the boolean classification -- be deprecated
or not -- is too simple. The number of devices we can actually
deprecate and remove is probably relatively small. But there also is
a large number of old-ish devices which only make sense in very few use
cases. When running an old OS. Or when emulating an old board. Which
also tend to be not maintained very well because there are not many
users. Maybe we need an "unsupported" state for them, with some
infrastructure like an easy way to compile qemu without unsupported
devices and an option to get warnings from qemu in case an unsupported
device is used.
take care,
Gerd
