Log Message:
Changes 2.9.0:

== Warning of unsupported host systems ==
This release includes changes to the configure script so that it will now report \ 
some host operating systems and
platforms as "unsupported". These are host setups which we do not have \ 
access to and are thus unable to test. They will continue to work in this 2.9 \ 
release (though configure will warn you about the unsupported status), but in a \ 
future QEMU release we may drop support for those hosts unless somebody \ 
volunteers to help us with maintaining them (and can provide build/CI machines).

This affects the CPU architectures:
* ia64
and the OSes:
* GNU/kFreeBSD
* DragonFly BSD
* NetBSD
* OpenBSD
* Solaris
* AIX
* Haiku

== System emulation ==
=== Incompatible changes ===
* Improvements to "-drive":
** "-drive"'s <tt>if</tt> option defaults to \ 
"none" on machines that do not have an onboard IDE or SCSI controller.
** "-drive if=scsi" does not work anymore with PC machine types, as it \ 
created an obsolete SCSI controller model. QEMU supports better controllers \ 
(megasas, mptsas, virtio-scsi) but which to use depends on the guest you are \ 
using.
** "Orphan" -drive options, where an <tt>if</tt> option is \ 
not supported by the emulated machine (e.g. "if=mtd" on x86) is now a \ 
fatal error. It had been triggering a warning since version 2.2.
=== Future incompatible changes ===
* Three options are using different names on the command line and in \ 
configuration file.  In particular:
** The "acpi" configuration file section matches command-line option \ 
"acpitable";
** The "boot-opts" configuration file section matches command-line \ 
option "boot";
** The "smp-opts" configuration file section matches command-line \ 
option "smp".
:-readconfig will standardize on the name for the command line option.
* Behavior of automatic calculation of SMP topology when some SMP topology \ 
options for -smp are omitted (sockets, cores, threads) will change in the \ 
future. If guest ABI needs to be preserved on upgrades while using the SMP \ 
topology options, users should either set set all options explicitly (sockets, \ 
cores, threads), or omit all of them.
* Devices "allwinner-a10", "pc87312", "ssi-sd" \ 
will be configured with explicit properties instead of implicitly.  This is \ 
unlikely to affect users.
* For x86, specifying a CPUID feature with both "+feature/-feature" \ 
and "feature=on/off" will cause a warning.  The current behavior for \ 
this combination ("+feature/-feature" wins over \ 
"feature=on/off") will be changed so that "+feature" and \ 
"-feature" will be synonyms for "feature=on" and \ 
"feature=off" respectively).