Re: [PATCH 0/2] Deprecate support for 32-bit x86 and arm hosts

[Warner Losh <imp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 1, 2023, 12:36 AM Markus Armbruster <armbru@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 09:05:16PM +0100, Thomas Huth wrote:
>> Well, without CI, I assume that the code will bitrot quite fast (considering
>> that there are continuous improvements to TCG, for example).
>
> We have lots of hosts which we don't test with CI.  They don't bitrot
> because people do testing before release. This is what RCs are for.
> We did releases before CI - it is a cost/benefit thing.

Dropping 32-bit x86 from CI feels like a no-brainer in the current
situation.

As to deprecating 32-bit x86: the people by far most qualified to judge
the "cost/benefit thing" are the regulars who are bearing the cost,
i.e. the people who are actually maintaining it.  Their opinion should
overrule any "but somebody out there might still want to use it".

Maintainers, please state your opinion, if any: aye or nay.

Richard tells us "the maint overhead is large."  Makes me think he's in
favour of dropping 32-bit x86.  Richard?

Peter seems to be reluctant to drop 32-bit ARM at this point.  Peter?

For FreeBSD systen we have no 32bit arm host users. There may be a few i386 host users left, but they are a tiny sliver of users. The overwhelming bulk of our users for qemu-system- are on x86-64 or aarch64 hosts.

For bsd-user, there is no 32 bit host support at all. It was dropped as part of the push to prune old code and upstream.

Warner