[postgis-devel] PostGIS 3.4.0 beta2 in a couple of days?

[Sebastiaan Couwenberg]

On 7/28/23 19:47, Regina Obe wrote:
>>> We've still got a couple more issues, like this i386 gcc13 regression
>>> which effects both PostGIS 3.3 and PostGIS 3.4
>>> https://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/5448
>>
>> Alternatively, you can decide no longer support i386 as it's not part of
>> CI for example.
> 
> Our cis still test on i386 machines, but admittedly it seems most people are
> running 64-bit these days.
> You know what portion of people still run on i386 architectures?

Numbers are hard to come by, of the systems submitting popcon [0] 
reports for the release architectures in Debian are:

  207071 amd64
    9709 i386
    1393 arm64
     677 armhf
     259 armel
      80 ppc64el
      25 riscv64
      12 s390x
      12 mipsel
       9 mips64el

Popcon is opt-in, so the actual number of systems is much larger. I do 
think it reasonably reflects the relative popularity.

[0] https://popcon.debian.org/ (has a nice graph of the numbers)

> Even the raspberry pis which were the largest of the i386 I was seeing are
> all switching to 64-bit.

Rasberry Pi is armel/armhf for the Pi 1/2, the Pi 3 and later are arm64.

> I don't bother testing or shipping for windows 32-bit anymore since no EDB
> PostgreSQL installers offered anymore for 64-bit.
Actual users of PostGIS on i386 are unlikely, just as they are on the 
obscure architectures like mipsel and ppc64el. amd64 and arm64 are what 
people are most likely to use.

The discussion around the year-2038 issue [1] showed this sentiment to 
be quite popular:

"
  i386 primarily exists for running legacy binaries and binary
  compatibility with legacy executables is more important than correct
  representation of time beyond 2038.
"

PostGIS is not a legacy binary. Supporting i386 is not a high priority. 
Handling architecture quirks correctly makes for good technical 
correctness, but is not the most efficient use of scarce contributor time.

[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/938149/

Kind Regards,

Bas

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