On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 07:28:24AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
i386 has been phased out a long time ago by many software projects as well as operating systems. Even in Debian, it was still on life support and now that life support is gone.Without getting into a debate over whether i386 should or should not be dropped, as someone that runs other 32-bit archs, I wonder why armhf and armel weren't similarly targeted?
i386 as a partial port was deemed useful for many people. Besides, in the area where it's useful many of its old limitations can be lifted.
I don't know that most of the software Debian includes would be highly opinionated about particular 32-bit archs. I suppose if compilers were actively dropping support for i386, that would make a difference. (I guess then I'd still have to wonder why they are dropping i386 but not armhf)
Software is actively dropping support for pre-SSE2 i386 (for many years already), I think that counts. But also, yes, compilers do this too, see the recent rust/clang discussion that led to the official baseline bump for i386 in trixie.
I note that armel will also be dropped for forky
Good, but it's unclear why you mentioned it in the question then. Unless you've meant leaving it as a rump architecture for some reason? Or what did you actually want to ask?
-- WBR, wRAR
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