Should we drop support for 32 bit Windows?

[targos]

It's not really something that I want, but given the issues I'm having with #42115, I thought it was worth to bring up the idea.

There are some stats on https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey which show that there are actually much less Steam users (I know that's probably not representative of Node.js Windows users, feel free to share better numbers) on 32 bit Windows (0.27%) than on 64 bit Windows 7 (4.08%, and we already stopped supporting Windows 7):

[mscdex]

I'm surprised that 32-bit support on Windows wasn't downgraded completely to Experimental at the same time that 32-bit on Linux was downgraded.

[Flarna]

As far as I remember linux 32 bit was dropped because of toolchain issues and the initial plan was to fix it later. That never happend and it seems noone really cares.

FWIW the default on Azure WebApps/Functions is still 32 Bit windows. Don't know why and they support also 64 Bit but the default is 32 bit as far as I know. Maybe because the lower mem requirement of 32 bit windows allows significant savings for a cloud provider.

[targos]

because of toolchain issues

That's also the kind of issues we have with Windows.

[targos]

@nodejs/tsc @nodejs/build @nodejs/platform-windows What do you think?

[sxa]

My gut feel is that we'd get quite a bit more pushback for removing 32-bit windows compared to 32-bit xlinux. I know that there are still customers, at least for java, that still need the 32-bit Windows builds for whatever reason, so I suspect that would be the same for node.js as well.

Although saying that, we could perhaps do with a few more windows devs at the project to help with issues such as the one you reference ... Perhaps dropping the tier it would make us find some volunteers more easily? ;-)

[Flarna]

Well, that time it was not even possible to get a compiler for the build machines to compile 32Bit code at all understanding the C++ standard require by v8. Google Chrome is available for 32Bit so in general it should work. But not sure if google uses msvc.

Anyhow, I fully understand the problem and if there are not enough people to solve them it's better to drop 32Bit only instead delaying/blocking the whole project.

[mcollina]

I'm +1 from dropping support of 32 Windows in v18. If companies care about this, they should actually allocate some people to fix it. This includes Microsoft (cc @fhinkel @bnb).

[richardlau]

Maybe someone could crawl through the daily download metrics in https://storage.googleapis.com/access-logs-summaries-nodejs/index.html (linked to from https://nodejs.org/metrics/) to gather some sort of evidence (either way).

[bnb]

(I know that's probably not representative of Node.js Windows users, feel free to share better numbers)

I actually think this is a good metric to track, specifically because a lot of the apps that "gamers" use end up bundling Node.js somehow (Electron or QT + Node.js).

I'm +1 from dropping support of 32 Windows in v18. If companies care about this, they should actually allocate some people to fix it.

I agree.

[benjamingr]

What if Node.js adds a warning to Windows 32bit builds and we see if people notice/care?

I agree with Matteo and Tierney that if companies care about this they should allocate some people to fix it.

[richardlau]

What if Node.js adds a warning to Windows 32bit builds and we see if people notice/care?

Based on the pushback we got around dropping Windows 7 I'm not that keen to go down this route. I'm open to downgrading 32-bit Windows from tier 1 if it's becoming impossible to keep working.

[targos]

What if Node.js adds a warning to Windows 32bit builds and we see if people notice/care?

The problem now is that we are not able to build it at all (with V8 10.1).