[HEADS UP] Eclipse dropping 32-bit arches

[Mat Booth]

The message about Ceph [1] reminded me that we should probably make the
same notification for Eclipse Platform.

The Eclipse Platform upstream is in the process of dropping all support for
32bit arches.

The current state is that upstream are no longer building for 32bit arches
upstream for 4.10 (release 2018-12) onwards. I expect them to start
actively removing 32bit specific code in future releases.

You can read more about the decision on the upstream bug [2]

In Fedora, Eclipse 4.10 which I am building for Rawhide and F29 right now,
still builds for 32bit arches, but this will not last long. I expect in a
future release (4.11 or later) Eclipse will no longer build on x86/arm and
at that time I will no longer be able to support these architectures in
Fedora -- I expect to exclude those arches from Fedora builds.

If you depend on the ECJ batch compiler, this will continue to be available
on all arches as a noarch package. (It is packaged as a discrete SRPM and
has no build or runtime dependency on the Eclipse Platform itself.)

Regards,
Mat


[1]
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/***@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/XCQIMO3W3D5XGHQHBVVIBUBPIXKJJJWL/
[2] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=526620

[Aleksandar Kurtakov]

Post by Mat Booth
The message about Ceph [1] reminded me that we should probably make the
same notification for Eclipse Platform.
The Eclipse Platform upstream is in the process of dropping all support
for 32bit arches.
The current state is that upstream are no longer building for 32bit arches
upstream for 4.10 (release 2018-12) onwards. I expect them to start
actively removing 32bit specific code in future releases.

Speaking as upstream representative here - even if we don't have plans to
start removing 32 bit specific code, we are not planning to check that the
whole pointer size magic to support 32 bit is done proper in new code so
native bits of Eclipse will probably fail to compile and it would be up to
Fedora maintainers providing these fixes and keep maintaining them as it
makes no sense to upstream such changes when support is on its way out.
What is worse though is that sometimes these issues are not catched at
compile time but at runtime resulting in crashing the whole Eclipse -
experience that would give bad name for both Eclipse and Fedora thus
definetely not wanted.

Post by Mat Booth
You can read more about the decision on the upstream bug [2]
In Fedora, Eclipse 4.10 which I am building for Rawhide and F29 right now,
still builds for 32bit arches, but this will not last long. I expect in a
future release (4.11 or later) Eclipse will no longer build on x86/arm and
at that time I will no longer be able to support these architectures in
Fedora -- I expect to exclude those arches from Fedora builds.

That's the best thing to do IMHO.

Post by Mat Booth
If you depend on the ECJ batch compiler, this will continue to be
available on all arches as a noarch package. (It is packaged as a discrete
SRPM and has no build or runtime dependency on the Eclipse Platform itself.
)
Regards,
Mat
[1]
[2] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=526620
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