Re: dropping 32-bit host support

[Philippe Mathieu-Daudé]

Hi Liviu,

On 16/3/23 07:19, Liviu Ionescu wrote:
> > On 16 Mar 2023, at 02:57, Andrew Randrianasulu <randrianasulu@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Looking at https://wiki.qemu.org/ChangeLog/8.0
> >
> > ===
> > System emulation on 32-bit x86 and ARM hosts has been deprecated. The QEMU 
> > project no longer considers 32-bit x86 and ARM support for system emulation to 
> > be an effective use of its limited resources, and thus intends to discontinue.
> >
> >   ==
> >
> > well, I guess arguing from memory-consuption point on 32 bit x86 hosts (like my 
> > machine where I run 32 bit userspace on 64 bit kernel) is not going anywhere, 
> > but what about 32bit userspace on Android tablets, either via Limbo emulator or 
> > qemu itself in Termux?
>
> or the countless 32-bit Raspberry Pi?
>
> my xPack binary tools, which include qemu arm & qemu riscv, are also available 
> for arm 32-bit, and the analytics show about the same number of downloads for 
> 32-bit as for 64-bit.
>
> given the current chip shortages, I estimate that the 32-bit Arm binaries will 
> still be useful for a few more years.

IIUC xPack uses npm -- so work on any environment where npm works --,
and fetch/install existing toolchains. Looking at ARM, all offered
toolchains are 64-bit host [1] and the deprecated [2]. Toolchains for
32-bit hosts are still available but also listed as "deprecated" [3].

[1] https://developer.arm.com/downloads/-/arm-gnu-toolchain-downloads
[2] https://developer.arm.com/downloads/-/gnu-a
[3] https://developer.arm.com/downloads/-/gnu-rm

If QEMU is useful to you for testing installing xPack on a 32-bit
emulated guest, I strongly recommend you to do that on a 64-bit host
rather than a limited performance 32-bit Raspberry Pi 2, it is a much
more pleasant "user experience". IMHO Raspberry Pi 2 was designed for
embedded setup and prototyping with other electronic devices, not
really as a compute intensive build CPU.

> > At least I hope it will be not *actively* (intentionally) broken, just 
> > ...unsupported (so users who know how to run git revert still will get their 
> > build for some more time).
>
> I concur, please do not intentionally break support for arm 32-bit, this will 
> make a lot of unhappy users, who currently have no choice to upgrade.
>
>
> thank you,
>
> Liviu

Regards,

Phil.