On 8/25/2015 10:23 AM, Erick Erickson wrote: > I have no real skin in this game, but I thought it worth asking after > Uwe's recent e-mail about disabling 32bits with -server tests. > > I guess it boils down to "who is using 32-bit versions?". Are we > spending time/energy supporting a configuration that is not useful to > enough people to merit the effort? > > I'm perfectly content if the response is "That's a really stupid > question to ask, of course we must continue to support 32-bit OSs". > Although some evidence would be nice ;) > > It's just that nobody I work with is running 32 bit OS's. Whether > that's just my limited exposure to people running small systems is > certainly a valid question.
As long as Oracle has 32-bit versions of Java available for easy download from the main website, we probably need to keep testing and supporting it. Lucene and Solr won't scale on a 32-bit Java, but I think there are still plenty of people who start there, and some who actually run it on 32-bit. That said, I think we do need to be thinking about dropping support in the future, even though we can't really do so yet. Intel stopped mass-producing 32-bit chips for the server market in 2005, and stopped mass production of 32-bit chips for the consumer market in 2006. For nearly the last decade, it has been very difficult to buy a computer incapable of 64-bit operation. Since Vista and Windows 7 came on the scene, Microsoft has been pushing 64-bit client operating systems. Server 2008R2 and Server 2012 are only available in 64-bit editions. Macs have been 64-bit for a VERY long time. I think the biggest market for 32-bit Java is browsers on Windows. Virtually all installs of Firefox and Chrome for Windows are 32-bit, and require the 32-bit Java. I bet that if the major browser vendors were to all put out 64-bit versions on their main download links, downloads of 32-bit Java would begin to dwindle rapidly. On Windows 10, it looks like Microsoft has finally gone 64-bit by default with the Edge browser. This might force the others to follow suit. When that happens, I think Oracle may strongly consider dropping 32-bit support from the next major Java version ... and even if they don't do it at that time, they probably will do so on the next major version after that. I just went to java.com with Microsoft Edge. It says "In Windows 10, the Edge browser does not support plug-ins and therefore will not run Java. Switch to a different browser (Firefox or Internet Explorer 11) to run the Java plug-in." They are not going to be helpful in pushing 64-bit Java. :) Thanks, Shawn --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@lucene.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@lucene.apache.org
