Re: [RFC PATCH] configure: deprecate 32 bit build hosts

[Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>]

On Thu, 26 Sep 2019 at 00:31, Alex Bennée <alex.bennee@linaro.org> wrote:
>
> The 32 bit hosts are already a second class citizen especially with
> support for running 64 bit guests under TCG. We are also limited by
> testing as actual working 32 bit machines are getting quite rare in
> developers personal menageries. For TCG supporting newer types like
> Int128 is a lot harder with 32 bit calling conventions compared to
> their larger bit sized cousins. Fundamentally address space is the
> most useful thing for the translator to have even for a 32 bit guest a
> 32 bit host is quite constrained.
>
> As far as I'm aware 32 bit KVM users are even less numerous. Even
> ILP32 doesn't make much sense given the address space QEMU needs to
> manage.

For KVM we should wait until the kernel chooses to drop support,
I think.

> @@ -745,19 +744,22 @@ case "$cpu" in
>    ;;
>    armv*b|armv*l|arm)
>      cpu="arm"
> -    supported_cpu="yes"
>    ;;

I'll leave others to voice opinions about their architectures,
but I still have 32-bit arm in my test set for builds, and
I'm pretty sure we have users (raspi users, for a start).


thanks
-- PMM