Re: The future of Linux32 builds and tests

On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 5:43 PM, William Lachance <[email protected]>
wrote:

> On 2015-10-08 5:26 PM, Mike Hommey wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 08, 2015 at 12:42:11PM -0700, Daniel Holbert wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/08/2015 11:34 AM, Daniel Holbert wrote:
>>>   https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1204920#c1
>>>
>>> The numbers there show that ~40% of our Linux users are using the
>>> 32-bit version. (on release & beta channels)  That's more than I was
>>> expecting.
>>>
>>> Given that, I'd be uncomfortable with option (3) ("turn off Linux32
>>> builds + tests entirely").  I'd also be uncomfortable with option (2)
>>> (doing builds but no tests), because then 40% of our linux users would
>>> be getting un-tested bits.  (Likely-working since they work on other
>>> platforms, but who knows.)
>>>
>>> Option (1) (running tests occasionally) seems doable though, and
>>> depending on how infrequent "occasionally" is, it seems like it could
>>> get us cost-savings that are close to those from option (2).
>>>
>>
>> Now the interesting question, is how many of those users are running on
>> 64-bits systems, and are only using 32-bits builds because that's what
>> they downloaded back when mozilla.org didn't even offer the 64-bits
>> version, which brings to the additional question: would it be worth
>> forcing 32->64-bit upgrades of Firefox.
>>
>
> Aren't the vast majority of users running a version of Firefox distributed
> by their vendor (of which Ubuntu probably has the largest share, see e.g.
> http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm)?
> I don't think any metrics gathered from the Firefox builds which we
> distribute are going to be very useful for measuring the impact of this
> change.
>
> I'd suggest reaching out to at least Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora on this
> and see what they think, at least as input. They're the domain experts, and
> we really depend on their goodwill for ensuring that Firefox remains the
> default browser for their operating system.
>

Sylvestre - Can you get input from the Debian community about this?

Lawrence