[RFC PATCH] docs/about/deprecated: Deprecate 32-bit host systems

[Richard Henderson]

On 1/30/23 13:14, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé wrote:
> On 30/1/23 20:19, Richard Henderson wrote:
> 
>> But I do question whether we need to support 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts at all.
>> Retaining 32-bit on 32-bit allows arm32 to emulate i686, which I suspect, but have no 
>> proof, is the limit of what users actually want.
> 
> I presume you implicitly restrict that to user emulation, right?

No, there's no specific reason to eliminate e.g. qemu-system-i386. or any other 32-bit 
guest.  Though quite often such hardware doesn't really have enough ram to do a good job, 
that's not a technical argument against.


> WRT i686, if your example is "i686 useremu on non-x86 embedde router"
> then any 32-bit host is potentially interested, not only arm32.

arm32 was merely an example -- the other 32-bit hosts are i686, mips, ppc.  But we don't 
have many of them.

> I remember being able to run armhf binaries on armel hosts (and vice
> versa) was useful 7 years ago.

Fair enough.

> Today I have no clue, we could poll the community and some 
> distributions.

Sure.


r~