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

[Peter A. Castro]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 11:37:26AM +0200, Thomas Wolff wrote:

Greetings, Thomas,

> 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?

Could you please give an example of the "fiddly" bit?  I list the URLs
to use with the install and it's clearly labeled "The last version of
Cygwin that supports XP is 2.5.2-1".  Or were you, perhaps, refering to
the actual usage of the URL in the Setup program?

Another user, Michel, responded that perhaps a more explicit message
with exact steps for install this might be helpful (as the "Dead Simple
Instructions" are generic), but I'm not sure it's really necessary.  Is
that, perhaps, what you are refering to in that the instructions aren't
explicit enough?

> Thomas
> 
> 
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-- 
--=> Peter A. Castro
Email: doctor at fruitbat dot org / Peter dot Castro at oracle dot com
	"Cats are just autistic Dogs" -- Dr. Tony Attwood