I think it about time to consider ending support for 32-bit computers.
Community please speak up.
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Definely, yes.
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Well, I’m not going to be downvoted here for saying this unlike r/linux, it been dead for a while. The world should move on.
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32-bit has it’s uses, it’s just that I can’t see a realistic scenario where Natron is used on many 32-bit computers for video/vfx etc.
Also, at least on Linux we sometimes have 32-bit specific bugs that are hard to fix (and hard to detect since the user base is too small).
Code should still be tested on 32 bits (it’s very easy to make a 32 bit docker image to build and test Natron). Any bug that pops up on 32 bit is a real bug resulting from non portable code and should be fixed. A proper testing matrix should also have big endian and little endian archs.
While there is no point in “dropping” 32 bit support. I see a point in dropping 32bit binary releases, though.
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I was of course talking about 32-bit release binaries only.
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Yes, system requirements for next releases should be:
- linux 64-bit >= 2.6.32, glibc >= 2.12 (i.e. CentOS 6.10, switch to CentOS 7 at the end of 2020)
- windows 10 64-bit
- macOS 10.9 64-bit (no need for universal binaries)
So, Win7/8 is not “supported” or will not run? Other than that seems ok for me at least.
I don’t see the point in supporting Windows 8 at all (less than 5% of installed PCs, all users upgraded this bloated OS to the lighter Windows 10, and not supported by Maya or Nuke either).
Supporting Windows 7 adds a lot of constraints (not possible within a docker image, we would have to use a virtualbox for building Natron and the full SDK) for an OS which is EOL in January 2020 anyway.
Windows 8 vs 10 is a matter of taste, it’s still a supported OS (until 2023). Windows 7 has a large user-base.
But, they binaries should still work on 7/8 as far as I know, so mostly a “we do not support you running on this OS” kind of thing?