Re: Deprecation of i386 and 32-bit powerpc for 15.0

On 6/20/25 15:15, Vadim Goncharov wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Jun 2025 04:09:29 +0900
> Tomoaki AOKI <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
>>>>> - ~6 months after branching (BSDCan 2026 devsummit):
>>>>>
>>>>>     - evaluate how stable/14 has been fairing (are MFCs breaking
>>>>>       deprecated platforms) (note that stable/13 will be EOL at this
>>>>>       point)
>>>>>
>>>>>       - if all is smooth, start removing code from main for i386 and
>>>>>         powerpc kernels as well as any powerpc userspace code not
>>>>>         required for lib32
>>>>
>>>> When can we expect lib32 removal?
>>> Hopefully never.
>>
>> Maybe this could puzzle more persons.
>>
>> IIUC, lib32 is for running 32bit apps on 64bit platform, which is NOT
>> planned for removal.
>>
>> What is going to be deprecated is 32bit bare-metal hardwares supports
>> for i386 and 32bit PowerPC, which never runs on 64bit modes.
> 
> Does that mean that support for 32-bit builds for virtual machines (that's
> important because they use less memory -> buy cheaper, especially when lots of
> them) will be continued after 2030 ?

If by "virtual machine" you mean bhyve/qemu/KVM/virtualbox/etc then no, that
will not be possible in 15.x and later because a full virtual machine needs
to run a FreeBSD kernel, and there will be no FreeBSD/i386 kernel for 15.x
and later.

If by "virtual machine" you mean containers, that will still be possible.

-- 
Colin Percival
FreeBSD Release Engineering Lead & EC2 platform maintainer
Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid