--- Begin Message ---
Package: release-notes
Severity: normal
Tags: patch
User: debian-qa@lists.debian.org
Usertags: i386
>From Debian trixie onward, i386 is no longer a fully-supported
architecture with an installer and a kernel: as announced in
<https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2023/12/msg00003.html>
it is only supported as a multiarch foreign architecture on a system
whose primary architecture is amd64, or as a chroot or container on a
system that can run i386 binaries (in practice amd64).
This makes it unlike the other supported architectures (amd64, arm64,
armel, armhf, ppc64el, riscv64, s390x) which can all be installed in the
usual way; so it seems misleading to list it as an equally-supported
architecture alongside them.
I think the clearest way to present this would be to remove i386 from
the list, and have an extra paragraph immediately after that list
briefly describing its limited support.
Straw-man wording attached (which I'm sure can be improved).
There's already a longer description of precisely what this means in
§5.1.1,
<https://www.debian.org/releases/testing/release-notes/issues.en.html#reduced-support-for-i386>
(which perhaps deserves a cross-reference but I couldn't think of a good
and concise way to phrase it).
Thanks,
smcv
>From 86765a65069d82d566071e3a2fceb477a9bbe2b7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2025 10:37:44 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] whats-new: Mention i386 outside the list of supported
architectures
>From Debian trixie onward, i386 is no longer a fully-supported
architecture with an installer and a kernel: as announced in
<https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2023/12/msg00003.html>
it is only supported as a multiarch foreign architecture on a system
whose primary architecture is amd64, or as a chroot or container on a
system that can run i386 binaries (in practice amd64).
Signed-off-by: Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>
---
source/whats-new.rst | 5 ++++-
1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/source/whats-new.rst b/source/whats-new.rst
index bfa65e83..7e650725 100644
--- a/source/whats-new.rst
+++ b/source/whats-new.rst
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ Supported architectures
The following are the officially supported architectures for Debian
|RELEASE|:
-- 32-bit PC (``i386``) and 64-bit PC (``amd64``)
+- 64-bit PC (``amd64``)
- 64-bit ARM (``arm64``)
@@ -28,6 +28,9 @@ The following are the officially supported architectures for Debian
- IBM System z (``s390x``)
+Additionally, support for the architecture targeting 32-bit PC (``i386``)
+can be added to 64-bit PCs for compatibility with legacy 32-bit binaries.
+
You can read more about port status, and port-specific information for
your architecture at the `Debian port web pages <https://www.debian.org/ports/>`__.
--
2.50.0
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--- Begin Message ---
On Wed, Jun 18, 2025 at 11:01:29AM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> Control: forwarded -1 https://salsa.debian.org/ddp-team/release-notes/-/merge_requests/238
>
> On Wed, 18 Jun 2025 at 10:46:05 +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> > Straw-man wording attached (which I'm sure can be improved).
>
> At the time I reported this bug, I hadn't seen that Chris Hofstaedtler
> already opened a MR for a similar change. I like Chris's wording better than
> what I proposed here.
Thanks for the flowers :)
I've merged 238, so I'm considering this done.
Best,
Chris
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