On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 9:32 AM Matthew Brett via NumPy-Discussion < [email protected]> wrote:
> Hi, > > On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 6:52 AM matti picus via NumPy-Discussion > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 3:42 AM Charles R Harris via NumPy-Discussion > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > Hi All, > > > > > > I would like to propose dropping 32 bit windows support in the NumPy > 2.6 branch. It is time, Steam is dropping support, and most downstream > projects dropped support some time ago. We can still test it, perhaps, but > the world isn't going that way. > Keeping it in CI for now while dropping the wheels for 2.6.0 seems like a good idea to me. Keeping our wheel build matrix reasonable is important for maintainability, and 32-bit Python on Windows has very low usage numbers now (and almost all of those are simple mistakes of clicking the wrong installer link on python.org). There have also been no serious complaints when other large packages like SciPy, Pillow and Matplotlib dropped support. For completeness, NumPy's download numbers were <1% years ago already, and dropping off further with every new Python version: https://discuss.python.org/t/dropping-32-bit-packages/5476/13. And we've been shipping 32-bit wheels without BLAS for years, and to my knowledge exactly zero people have complained about linalg operations being ~100x slower. So, it's time. Now if we keep one CI job, does anyone care enough about that to list themselves behind that job in https://numpy.org/neps/nep-0057-numpy-platform-support.html#tier-3? If not, we can put it in Unsupported perhaps, with a note that we kept one CI job that can be dropped as soon as it becomes more trouble than it's worth. > > > > > > Chuck > > > > +1 from me > > Matti > > Worth floating with Steve Dower? https://stevedower.id.au/about ; > https://github.com/zooba Here's Steve's recommendation at the end of the most recent last thread on Discourse about 32-bit Windows (from https://discuss.python.org/t/consider-downgrading-windows-32-bit-from-tier-1-to-tier-2-or-tier-3-in-python-3-13/33719/63 ): "If package maintainers want to stop releasing wheels for 32-bit Windows, that’s between them and their users. Right now, dropping 32-bit Windows and picking up ARM64 Windows is probably a good trade, though in most cases the cost will be close to zero anyway." Cheer,s Ralf > > > I seem to remember him saying, quite a few years ago, that 32-bit > Windows was in practice only important for Windows ARM users running > the 32-bit Intel binaries under emulation. Now there are Windows ARM > wheels (and CI), so I bet that there are a very small number of people > who need these. > > Cheers, > > Matthew > _______________________________________________ > NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > https://mail.python.org/mailman3//lists/numpy-discussion.python.org > Member address: [email protected] >
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