On 15/01/2026 19.01, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
Informally we have approximately three groups of platforms

  * Tier 1: fully built and fully tested by CI. Must always be
            kept working & regressions fixed immediately

  * Tier 2: fully built and partially tested by CI. Should
            always be kept working & regressions fixed quickly

  * Tier 3: code exists but is not built or tested by CI.
            Should not be intentionally broken but not
           guaranteed to work at any time. Downstream must
           manually test, report & fix bugs.

Anything else is "unclassified" and any historical code
remnants may be removed.

It is somewhat tricky to define unambiguous rules for each tier,
but this doc takes a stab at it. We don't need to cover every
eventuality. If we get the core points of view across, then it
at least sets the direction for maintainers/contributors/users.
Other aspects can be inferred with greater accuracy than today.

Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <[email protected]>
---
...
+
+Tier 2
+~~~~~~
+
+These platforms are considered to be near Tier 1 level, but are
+lacking sufficient automated CI testing cover to guarantee this.
+
+ * Builds and all tests pass at all times in both git HEAD and releases
+
+ * Builds for multiple build configuration are integrated in CI
+
+ * Runs some test frameworks in CI

I don't think that we run any test frameworks for Linux on mips64el or riscv64 in the CI, do we? It's only cross-compilation of the code.

...
+
+Tier 3
+~~~~~~
+
+These platforms have theoretical support in the code, but have
+little, or no, automated build and test coverage. Downstream
+consumers (users or distributors) who care about these platforms
+are requested to perform manual testing, report bugs and provide
+patches.
+
+ * Builds and tests may be broken at any time in Git HEAD and
+   releases
+
+ * Builds are not integrated into CI
+
+ * Tests are not integrated into CI
+
+ * Merging code is not gated
+
+This covers:
+
+ * NetBSD
+ * OpenBSD
+ * macOS (except aarch64)
+ * FreeBSD (except x86_64)
+ * Windows (except x86_64)
+ * Solaris

You missed Haiku.


+
+Unclassified
+~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+These platforms are not intended to be supported in the code
+and outside the scope of any support tiers.
+
+  * Code supporting these platforms can removed at any time
+  * Bugs reports related to these platforms will generally
+    be ignored
+
+This covers:
+
+ * All 32-bit architectures on any OS

Support for 32-bit OSes is currently being removed.

+ * Any OS not listed above

Is it possible at all to compile QEMU for any other OS? I though our configure script would block such attempts...?

 Thomas


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