[arch-dev-public] Shadowing i686, round 1

[Gerardo Exequiel Pozzi]

On 12/12/16 21:51, Gaetan Bisson wrote:
> [2016-12-12 21:51:31 +0100] Bartłomiej Piotrowski:
>> In September we discussed upgrading the default -march value for
>> packages to include SSE2 (and possibly more instructions). I think the
>> general consensus was that we don't agree what we should do and we just
>> left the problem intact.
>>
>> Semi-necrobumping that thread, I want to bring back one proposal – let's
>> deprecate i686 architecture. All my machines at home and work are
>> x86_64. Building i686 packages is a chore I'm less and less willing to
>> do, and I boot up a 32-bit virtual machine only if bug has been reported
>> against that architecture. No, I don't do even smoke tests – I assume
>> that i686 works if x86_64 does. (Don't beat me up too hard for that.)
>>
>> To back up my idea, our completely unreliable pkgstats data says that
>> 8.53% came from i686 installs, but only a little over 4% is incompatible
>> with amd64. Obviously there is no way to verify this data, but I suspect
>> that these numbers are even lower in the reality. We're just wasting our
>> time.
>>
>> I'd like to set a certain date of dropping i686 completely. During that
>> time, community and/or interested packagers could come up with either
>> automated build solution, making it "tier 2" architecture. Otherwise it
>> would just die of natural cause.
> 
> That sounds great to me.
> 
> How about June 1st, 2017? It's about six months for now, surely that's
> enough time to see things coming for those who still care about i686.
> 
> Cheers.
> 

If this is going to happens, maybe the ISO of this month should be the
last dual, with i686 support.

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