Re: dropping 32-bit host support

["Philippe Mathieu-Daudé" <philmd@linaro.org>]

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.