Re: dropping 32-bit Windows host support

[Daniel P . Berrangé]

On Mon, Feb 19, 2024 at 03:37:31PM +0000, Peter Maydell wrote:
> Our msys2 32-bit Windows host CI job has been failing recently
> because upstream MSYS2 are starting to phase out 32-bit windows
> host support and are steadily removing i686 versions of packages.
> The latest is dtc:
> https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/2177
> 
> The writing is clearly on the wall for their 32-bit support, judging
> from the "2023-12-13 - Starting to drop some 32-bit Packages" news
> item at https://www.msys2.org/news/ and associated discussion at
> https://github.com/msys2/MINGW-packages/discussions/19326 .
> 
> QEMU on a 32-bit host is not likely to be a great experience, and I
> suspect we don't have many users using 32-bit Windows who couldn't
> use the 64-bit version instead. Our Download page points users at
> MSYS2's packages, and they have already dropped the 32-bit QEMU
> package build. Stefan Weil's binaries page, which is the other thing
> we link to from Download, has no 32-bit version newer than 7.2.0.
> So anybody using 32-bit Windows QEMU must be building it themselves.
> Plus, we've already deprecated system emulation on 32-bit x86 hosts,
> so the only remaining "supported" config is with the NVMM or WHPX
> accelerators.

The other data point is that Win11 is 64-bit only, and IIUC,
Win10 was 64-bit only for new OEM installs too, only upgrades
or end user installs could choose 32-bit. 

> 
> I suggest that we should:
> 
>  * remove the msys2-32bit CI job entirely (we will still have at least
>    compile-time coverage via the cross-win32-system job)
>  * document that the 32-bit Windows support is deprecated in
>    docs/about/build-platforms.rst and deprecated.rst
>  * update our Download page to remove mention of 32-bit Windows
> 
> Any objections?

I think that's sane.

With regards,
Daniel
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