Re: Future of 32-bit platforms (including i386)

I would very much appreciate if lib32 support stays in (or is completed
in the case of aarch64).  Without it, FreeBSD becomes a lot less useful
as a well rounded development system as you can no longer test code for
32 bit platforms.  I also have a need for armv7 user space code in
particular as I participate in and maintain the FreeBSD port of a Forth
system written in armv7 assembly.  Being able to run the same code you
run on a microcontroller on a hosted platform makes it a lot easier to
test and develop.

As for running 32 bit kernels, I do not really have an opinion.

Yours,
Robert Clausecker

Am Thu, Apr 27, 2023 at 10:19:59AM -0700 schrieb John Baldwin:
> For 13.0, i386 was demoted from Tier 1 to Tier 2.  In the announcement
> of this for 13.0, the project committed to an update on i386's future
> around the time of 14.0.  The announcement at the time suggested that
> i386 would be supported less in 14.x than in 13.x.
> 
> My proposal is that for 14.x we treat i386 like any other Tier 2
> platform.  That is, release images and packages would only be provided
> on a best-effort basis, and we would not guarantee providing them.  I
> think we should also stop shipping binary updates for the base system
> (freebsd-update) for 14.x for i386.
> 
> A larger question is what to do about 32-bit platforms moving forward.
> My proposal for powerpc, i386, and armv[67] is that we say publicly
> that we anticipate not supporting them in 15.  That is, that we may
> remove them outright from the tree, or we may leave them in the tree,
> but we do not plan on building packages or release images.  Another
> option to consider for 32-bit platforms perhaps in 15 is to remove
> kernel support and only retain the ability to build userland.  The
> goal of saying this now-ish (or about the time 14.0 is going to ship)
> would be to give time for users and developers to respond in the
> window between 14.0 and 15.0 so we can evaluate those responses as an
> input into the final decision for 15.
> 
> -- 
> John Baldwin
> 

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