On Wed, Aug 21, 2019 at 10:03:01AM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>
> so i hope that list gives a bit more context as to how serious the
> consequences of dropping 32 bit support really is.
I very much doubt we are any where near "dropping 32-bit support".
There's a lot of "all or nothing thinking" in your argumentation
style.
As Sam has said multiple times, what's much more likely is that the
set of packages that can't be built on native packages on 32-bit
platforms will grow over time. The question is when will that
actually *matter*? There are many of these packages which no one
would want to run on a 32-bit platform, especially if we're focusing
on the embedded use case.
At least initially, the simplest way of dealing with the problem is
that maintainers will simply not build their package on 32-bit
platforms. If it's for some "large matrix multiplication" package, it
might not matter. And if there is someone for which it will matter,
then they can contribute the work to make that package build
successfully on 32-bit platforms. Perhaps that will get done via
improving the toolchains, or by changing the package in question so it
is more friendly to linkers running in limited address space.
When do we get to the point where /bin/ld is going to fail core
critical packages like, say, util-linux? My claim is that it is *far*
in the distant future. If you have hard data showing that this date
is coming in the near future, please share it.
Regards,
- Ted
