ChangeLog/3.1

System emulation

Incompatible changes

• The "tls", "x509", and "x509verify" options to "-vnc" have been removed. The "tls-creds" option should be used instead to point to a "tls-creds-x509" object created using "-object"

New deprecated options and features

• The '-machine enforce-config-section' parameter is replaced by the '-global migration.send-configuration' option.
• The 'name' parameter of the '-net' option is a synonym for the 'id' parameter, which should now be used instead.
• The 'hub_id name' parameter tuple of the 'hostfwd_add' and 'hostfwd_remove' HMP commands has been replaced by 'netdev_id'.
• The PowerPC target 'prep' machine type should be replaced by the '40p' machine type.
• Parsing of key,value pair filenames for the RBD block device
• Incorrect CPU topologies specified by -smp socket,core,thread options that are describing number of VCPUs not equal to 'maxcpus'

Consult the "Deprecated Features" appendix for the full list of historically deprecated features/options.

PowerPC

• prep: Deprecate QEMU PReP machine in favour of the 40p machine
• 40p: switch firmware from Open HackWare to OpenBIOS
• 40p: fix IRQ routing to enable the Linux sandalfoot zImage to boot
• Mac Old World/New World: add support for booting from virtio-blk-pci devices (QEMU/OpenBIOS)

s390

• support for vfio-ap (s390 crypto devices)
  • KVM host kernel needs to be 4.20+
• remove deprecated 's390-squash-mcss' option
• add 'max' cpu model

KVM

• add support for etoken facility
• add support for huge page backing

TCG

• add support for instruction flags and AFP registers

SPARC

• sun4u: add support for boot from virtio-blk-pci block devices (QEMU/OpenBIOS)

x86

• Documented recommendations for choosing CPU models to ensure good performance and security of x86 guests.

Crypto subsystem

• The XTS cipher mode performance has been approximately doubled

Block devices and tools

• The "qemu-img convert" command handling of secrets has been fixed, allowing creation of LUKS encrypted target files.

Build Information

Build Dependencies

• Support for the GTK2 display frontend has been removed. GTK3 should be used instead
• The minimum GTK3 version is now 3.14.0
• The minimum GNUTLS version is now 3.1.18
• The minimum libgcrypt version is now 1.5.0
• The minimum nettle version is now 2.7.1

Known issues

• see Planning/3.1