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

[Jeremy Drake]

Oops, forgot to send to list.

On Wed, 27 Oct 2021, Takashi Yano 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.

Please also note that Windows on ARM64 only just got the ability to run
x86_64 binaries in Windows 11.  Previously the only option was 32-bit
x86, as there is no native ARM port of Cygwin.  I don't know about Cygwin
directly, but I know there are users of Git for Windows on ARM.

I think a more gradual sunsetting of 32-bit might be a resonable
compromise, based on the original wording:

> 11:26 <corinna> starting with 3.4.0, maintainers are not obliged to
> release packages in 32 bit

so as of 3.4.0 some packages that are problematic on 32 bit may stop
providing 32-bit versions.  But not being obliged to release packages is a
whole different thing than having the core code that allows *any* package
to run being ripped out in that version.