On Mon, 19 Feb 2024 at 16:26, Thomas Huth <th...@redhat.com> wrote: > > On 19/02/2024 16.53, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote: > > On Mon, Feb 19, 2024 at 03:37:31PM +0000, Peter Maydell wrote: > >> Our msys2 32-bit Windows host CI job has been failing recently > >> because upstream MSYS2 are starting to phase out 32-bit windows > >> host support and are steadily removing i686 versions of packages. > >> The latest is dtc: > >> https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/2177 > >> > >> The writing is clearly on the wall for their 32-bit support, judging > >> from the "2023-12-13 - Starting to drop some 32-bit Packages" news > >> item at https://www.msys2.org/news/ and associated discussion at > >> https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages/discussions/19326 . > >> > >> QEMU on a 32-bit host is not likely to be a great experience, and I > >> suspect we don't have many users using 32-bit Windows who couldn't > >> use the 64-bit version instead. Our Download page points users at > >> MSYS2's packages, and they have already dropped the 32-bit QEMU > >> package build. Stefan Weil's binaries page, which is the other thing > >> we link to from Download, has no 32-bit version newer than 7.2.0. > >> So anybody using 32-bit Windows QEMU must be building it themselves. > >> Plus, we've already deprecated system emulation on 32-bit x86 hosts, > >> so the only remaining "supported" config is with the NVMM or WHPX > >> accelerators. > > > > The other data point is that Win11 is 64-bit only, and IIUC, > > Win10 was 64-bit only for new OEM installs too, only upgrades > > or end user installs could choose 32-bit. > > Yes, and considering that there will likely be a Windows 12 at one point in > time, we'll drop support for Win10 and thus 32-bit support anyway. > > >> I suggest that we should: > >> > >> * remove the msys2-32bit CI job entirely (we will still have at least > >> compile-time coverage via the cross-win32-system job) > >> * document that the 32-bit Windows support is deprecated in > >> docs/about/build-platforms.rst and deprecated.rst > >> * update our Download page to remove mention of 32-bit Windows > >> > >> Any objections? > > > > I think that's sane. > > Sounds good to me, too. > > Note that we already have an entry for "System emulation on 32-bit x86 > hosts" in the deprecation list ... so IMHO we could also justify to drop the > 32-bit Windows support immediately, since that's a subset of that entry.
Mmm. I had initially misread that as only applying to TCG, but it's more general than that. So I think I agree that we should go ahead and mark 32-bit Windows support as definitively dropped. I'll put together some patches at some point. -- PMM
