[arch-dev-public] News draft: QEMU >= 7.0.0 may need manual intervention

[David Runge]

On 2022-04-22 11:07:26 (+0200), David Runge via arch-dev-public wrote:
> On 2022-04-22 10:52:06 (+0200), Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) wrote:
> > I'm still unhappy with `pacman -S qemu` not doing anything useful. Maybe we
> > could name that `qemu-misc` or `qemu-common` instead
> > and have our various metapackages provide `qemu`, so the user at least gets
> > to select a provider?
> 
> Hmm, that might work, too!
> 
> If I understand you correctly, you would want something like:
> 
> * qemu -> qemu-common
> * change split package dependencies from qemu to qemu-common
> * qemu-base provides qemu
> * qemu-desktop provides qemu (still replaces qemu<7)
> 
> Would qemu-common still track all optional dependencies? I think the
> visibility of those in one place is very important, but to me it seems
> counterintuitive to have them on qemu-common. Do you have a better
> suggestion for this use-case?

After some further discussion with Jan yesterday, we evaluated a few
more options to directly provide a functional qemu install experience,
while still allowing for a granular setup.

The solution we arrived at is:

* move contents of (current) qemu to qemu-common and strip away the
  optdepends
* make qemu a fully virtual package, provided by
  qemu-{base,desktop,full}
* have each provider of qemu add the optdepends

This setup allows for users to install qemu and choose a provider or go
for a more specific solution on top of qemu-common.

So I hope the below is the last iteration :)


Title: QEMU >= 7.0.0 changes split package setup

```
With the update to qemu 7.0.0 the package has been turned into a more
fine grained split package utilizing meta packages.

* The `qemu` package is now virtually provided by the meta packages
  `qemu-base`, `qemu-desktop` and `qemu-full`.
* The functionality of `qemu` prior to 7.0.0 is replaced by
  `qemu-desktop`
* The functionality of `qemu-headless` is replaced by
  `qemu-base`
* The functionality of `qemu-arch-extra` and `qemu-headless-arch-extra`
  is replaced by `qemu-emulators-full`
* The meta package `qemu-full` provides all QEMU related
  packages (excluding `qemu-guest-agent`)
```

Best,
David

-- 
https://sleepmap.de
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