The GNOME Project has ceased development, maintenance, and support for the extension "org.gnome.Platform.i386.Compat", which was used in GNOME Flatpak Runtime to ensure compatibility with 32-bit applications. The extension provided 32-bit versions of GTK and GNOME libraries, used to deliver 32-bit applications in flatpak packages suitable for installation on 64-bit distributions that have stopped providing 32-bit libraries (multilib). GNOME Flatpak Runtime is now available only for x86_64 and AArch64 architectures.
The most popular 32-bit applications distributed in flatpak format are Wine and Steam. It is noted that the discontinuation of support for the 32-bit version of GNOME Flatpak Runtime will not affect these packages, as they do not use the 32-bit builds of GTK 4, libadwaita, and WebkitGTK.
The reason for the discontinuation of support for 32-bit systems is mentioned as a desire to relieve the continuous integration infrastructure and to eliminate issues arising from inadequate developer testing on 32-bit systems before committing changes to the repository. There are situations where bugs that manifest only on 32-bit systems block the inclusion of changes in GNOME repositories. Additionally, rebuilding places extra load on the infrastructure, which has limited resources, as the entire GNOME is rebuilt from Git at least twice a day for each module, along with rebuilding WebKitGTK, the mozjs engine, and several libraries and applications in Rust.
The resulting bugs frustrate developers who have to spend their time supporting builds that are scarcely used. It turned out that the 32-bit GNOME Flatpak Runtime on Flathub contains only two packages, plus an additional package in Flathub Beta. Developers of these applications have been sent requests with changes to move the packages to the main GNOME 49 Runtime. In Bottles, the change request is almost ready for merging, while in the Lutris and Minigalaxy projects, it still requires further work.
It is also mentioned that after the discontinuation of GNOME Runtime assembly for armv7 and i386 architectures, 32-bit platforms ceased to be used in quality testing prior to GNOME releases. Previously, developers could ensure that all GNOME modules would be compiled for the i386/x86 architecture; however, this situation has changed, and testing is now conducted at the discretion of the developers of each individual module. Fixing issues specific to 32-bit systems is now performed at the discretion of the maintainers. Distributions that provide 32-bit builds of GNOME must conduct testing and address issues for most projects independently.
Source: opennet.ru
