[HEADSUP] Phasing out old Windows versions and 32 bit support

[Thomas Wolff]

Am 27.10.2021 um 10:49 schrieb Corinna Vinschen via Cygwin:
> On Oct 27 09:24, Takashi Yano via Cygwin wrote:
>> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 22:55:01 +0200
>> Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>>> We're also planning to drop Support for the 32 bit release of Cygwin in
>>> 2022, thus Cygwin 3.4.0 won't come in 32 bit anymore, and the package
>>> maintainers won't have to update 32 bit packages anymore.  If you're
>>> still running Cygwin under WOW64, consider to move to 64 bit in the next
>>> couple of months.
>> I agree with you that 32 bit cygwin under WOW64 is not worth to
>> support any more. However, 32 bit version of Windows 10 will be
>> still supported at least until Oct. 2025. Personally, I think it
>> would not be nice to exclude the supported windows version from
>> cygwin support.
> Well, it's not much effort to support WOW64 if we support 32 bit anyway.
> The problem is that Cygwin is somehow outgrowing 32 bit systems in terms
> of the available memory.  Also, 32 bit Cygwin is still using a 32 bit
> time_t, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
>
> Per the download statistics, as far as those statistics are trustable,
> 32 bit systems are less than 5% of the installed base, with the majority
> of them being WOW64 installations.  Those can move over to 64 bit Cygwin
> easily.
>
> Less than 1% are real 32 bit systems.
I think roughly 1% is still a community to consider. Working old 
machines shouldn't be trashed just because they are missing a few bits :)

> Dropping 32 bit support will reduce code complexity in Cygwin and it will
> reduce the workload of the package maintainers.
Code complexity was also an argument when dropping XP support, but there 
was quite some discussion at its time.
For `egrep "# *if.*(32|64)"` I'm counting roughly 160 matches in winsup, 
but only in a few files. Is it really necessary?

> Those few still running
> Cygwin on a real 32 bit system will still have a chance to run Cygwin
> by utilizing Peter's time machine.

Peter's time machine is a very appreciable effort. It's a bit fiddly though to figure out how to use it, particularly to identify the "latest XP version". Maybe some explicit howto could be published on the cygwin pages?

Thomas