Hello list, Blender 2.80 was the last version of Blender for which 32-bit builds were officially supported. This was announced by Brecht in [1]. That announcement was a bit unclear to me, which I let pass because it wasn't that relevant for my position back then. However, now that I'm the Linux platform maintainer, I wouldn't mind if the situation was clarified.
In that announcement, Brecht writes: > Blender 2.80 was the last release where we officially support 32 bit Windows > and Linux builds. [...] > We will continue to support it to the level that we do for example ARM. That > is we keep the Blender code working independent of the processor > architecture, particularly for Linux packages. But we don't actively test > them or release our own builds. This sounds like an impossibility to me: the promise that we keep things working, but without building, or testing. Apparently there is also a distinction between "official support" and "support to some level". The Blender requirements page [2] does list 64-bit as a requirement. But, there is no "last version that supported 32-bit" in the "Previous Versions" section of that page. Also there is no mention of dropping official support for 32-bit architectures in the 2.81 release notes [3]. I found out about this unclear situation when looking at a patch that ought to fix an issue on 32-bit platforms [4]. In the discussion on that patch, Brecht writes: > When writing or reviewing code, you ensure that there is always a processor > architecture independent code path. And if you get a report and it turns out > such a code path is missing or broken, you fix it. It's the same for x86, > mips, sparc, etc. This looks like a statement that these platforms are still supported. Personally I would summarize the above as: - Blender Foundation does not provide buildbots for 32-bit platforms. - Developers have to ensure these platforms keep working. - Testing such fixes is unnecessary. I think I'm misunderstanding the situation here, and I wouldn't mind if this was clarified. Sybren [1]: https://lists.blender.org/pipermail/bf-committers/2019-August/050124.html [2]: https://www.blender.org/download/requirements/ [3]: https://wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.81 [4]: https://developer.blender.org/D9577 _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list Bf-committers@blender.org https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
