32 bits digiKam bundles : still necessary ?

[Remco Viëtor]

On jeudi 2 novembre 2017 11:52:58 CET Gilles Caulier wrote:
> 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

I've switched to 64-bit years ago, so /for me/, maintaining a 32-bit version 
looks like a waste of time. And from the other answers, there's /perhaps/ one 
in there who is still using a 32-bit digikam version.

Is it possible to freeze a 32-bit source (for older OS versions), and only 
provide builds for 64-bit versions? After all, the 32-bit OSs seem to be 
outdated (at least as far as Linux is concerned), so users are already behind 
on security patches. If you provide source tarballs, the 32-bit users will 
still have access to the program, but of course w/o the latest functionality.

And if the libraries Digikam depends on are moving more and more to C++11/C+
+14, older systems will get forced out sooner rather than later anyway. It's 
unreasonable to expect a small player wasting time for a platform the big ones 
have dropped...

Btw, I thought digikam was moving away from the KDE frameworks, and aimed to 
be 'QT only'?

Remco

P.S. If indeed the Windows 32-bit build cross-compiles w/o problems, deprecate 
it for a year or so after dropping the other 32-bit builds?