Re: [PATCH 0/2] Deprecate support for 32-bit x86 and arm hosts

On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 12:10:48PM +0100, Thomas Huth wrote: > We're struggling quite badly with our CI minutes on the shared > gitlab runners, so we urgently need to think of ways to cut down > our supported build and target environments. qemu-system-i386 and > qemu-system-arm are not really required anymore, since nobody uses > KVM on the corresponding systems for production anymore, and the > -x86_64 and -arch64 variants are a proper superset of those binaries. > So it's time to deprecate them and the corresponding 32-bit host > environments now. > > This is a follow-up patch series from the previous discussion here: > > https://lore.kernel.org/qemu-devel/20230130114428.1297295-1-thuth@redhat.... > > where people still mentioned that there is still interest in certain > support for 32-bit host hardware. But as far as I could see, there is > no real need for 32-bit host support for system emulation on x86 and > arm anymore, so it should be fine if we drop these host environments > now (these are also the two architectures that contribute the most to > the long test times in our CI, so we would benefit a lot by dropping > those). Your description here is a little ambiguous about what's being proposed. When you say dropping 32-bit host support do you mean just for the system emulator binaries, or for QEMU entirely ?

And when the deprecation period is passed, are you proposing to actively prevent 32-bit builds, or merely stopping CI testing and leave 32-bit builds still working if people want them ?