32 bits digiKam bundles : still necessary ?

[Gilles Caulier]

Hi all,

Just few words in this room about the bundles files created at each digiKam
releases.

Currently we provide :

- 2 Windows installers : 32 and 64 bits.
- 1 MacOS PKG : 64 bits.
- 2 Linux AppImage : 32 and 64 bits.

I plan to drop the 32 bits versions and let's only the 64 bits.

Why ? because 32 bits become more and more difficult to build, especially
the AppImage. I spare a lots of time to maintain the bundles compilation
workflow. All this time passed at this task is not used to really code in
digiKam.

About AppImage, this needs to be compiled from scratch. I use CentOS 6 to
prevent broken binary compatibility with glibc with recent Linux distro.

CentOS 6 32 bits is not maintained anymore. To get last compiler version
supporting C++11 at least to compile Qt5 and KF5, i need to branch the
distro to Scientific Linux from the CERN which provide extra repository.
But this become step by step complicated to maintain in time. I tried to
use last Qt 5.9.2 and the compiler version is not enough. And i don't talk
about last KF5 version witch use more and more C++14 rules in source code
which are not supported well by old compilers.

Note : The Windows 32 bits croos-compiled with MXE is not problematic, but
to be homogeneous, i will drop this one too.

Another point in favor of 64 bits against 32 bits version : 32 bits is
limited in absolute to 4 GB of RAM, lees of course delegate to OS. So
digiKam will quickly saturate the memory if you try to manage huge images
(as panorama for ex).

An last point : 32 bits systems become less and less used. My viewpoint is
to promote 64 bits instead now.

Users viewpoints are welcome.
Thanks in advance

Gilles Caulier
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