I recently stumbled over the following Intel proposal for dropping 32bit support in x86 processors. [1]
This inspired me to propose dropping 32bit support for PostgreSQL starting with PG17.
It seems obvious that production systems mostly won't use newly installed 32 bit native code in late 2024 and beyond.
A quick inspection of the buildfarm only showed a very limited number of 32bit systems.
This proposal follows the practice for Windows which already (practically) dropped 32bit support.
32bit systems may get continuing support in the backbranches until PG16 retires in 2028.
Even if I am not a postgres hacker I suppose this could simplify things quite a lot.
Any thoughts for discussion are welcome!
Hans Buschmann
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-X86-S-64-bit-Only