Cygwin x86 end-of-life

[Brian Inglis]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2022 22:07:56 +0100, Achim Gratz wrote:
> Brian Inglis writes:
>> As mingw64-i686 target is cross for native Windows 32, and we are
>> dropping Cygwin support for Windows 32, should we not also be dropping
>> cross support for native Windows 32, as so few people are using it,
>> and software developers, packagers, and distros, including us, are
>> dropping it as platform and target?
> 
> I am unlikely to update that toolchain when I move gcc to version 12 or
> later.

So mingw64-i686 cross for native Windows 32 will soon be EoL, and an 
announcement should be made at some point.
That may give us some feedback on whether there is much use of the Cygwin 
packages or whether those available from the Mingw64 project are preferred.

>> Also there are 309 unmaintained mingw64 packages, so perhaps reducing
>> the double (over the base package) extra work of maintaining mingw64
>> packages to a single extra cross might enable us to persuade some
>> maintainers to pick up unmaintained native Windows 64 cross
>> mingw64-x86_64 packages corresponding to the base packages they
>> maintain?
> 
> I can't speak for others, but on my end there's not been much of a
> problem with having the MingW64 packages in two flavors in addition to
> the Cygwin dual architecture builds.  Maybe we'll end up supporting
> ARM64 some way down the road and then it's going to be yet another
> target again for packagers.

A single package build uses all available cpu on my system (0-9% idle), and 
large packages or those with extensive tests take an hour per arch, so it's 4 
hours duration, plus another 3(+/-1) to run on scallywag, sometimes overlapped.
Not usually a problem unless a couple of those upgrade the same week.
Dropping x86 and mingw64-i686 half that.

Once that direction has been determined, perhaps we can suggest here that 
package maintainers pick up related unmaintained mingw64-x86_64 packages, and 
post a list of the suggestions, or a report like the deprecated library and 
unmaintained packages reports linked from the search page.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis			Calgary, Alberta, Canada

La perfection est atteinte			Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter	not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer	but when there is no more to cut
			-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry