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Support for the 32bit architecture (i686)

SystemRescue 9.02 has been released for x86_64 only as the code does not build successfully on i686 because of conflicts in the package dependencies. The last time the build for i686 was working was on 2022-02-20 (we can specify this date using the snapshot feature when we run the build script).

32bit releases have been provided so far. This project uses Arch Linux 32 as the upstream for providing packages for i686. But this upstream is a smaller community compared to the main Arch Linux for x86_64, so they have limited resources, and hence it is more difficult to identify and fix problems. As the number of people still using 32bit platforms keeps decreasing, it is becoming more difficult to maintain such builds.

Time is precious and it is in short supply. It does not make sense for us to spend a lot of time for investigating and resolving issues which affect the 32bit platform specifically, considering the low popularity of this platform. This time can be better spent on general features which benefits all users.

In the long term, it will not be possible to maintain a 32bit build for this project. Lots of popular projects such as Arch Linux have decided to drop support for i686 years ago. 64bit cpu have been mainsteam since 2006.

If there are users who really want the i686 to be available, please contribute to make this possible. You can use the README file in this repository to learn how to build SystemRescue. You do not need to have Arch Linux 32 installed on your machine, as you can run the build in docker containers. You can test the build on your local machine, and then help resolve problems affecting i686. When build problems are caused by upstream issues, you can report the issue to them directly. You can raise merge requests in this project when code changes need to be made here. You can also post comments to this ticket for discussions.

Here is what volunteers need to do in order to help keep the 32bit release alive:

  • Create a personal account on GitLab, and fork this repository to have your own code base
  • Regularly get the latest SystemRescue sources from GitLab and build the 32bit release locally
  • Execute your build of SystemRescue for i686 on either a physical or virtual machine to test the main features
  • Raise issues on GitLab when problems have been identified to keep track of the progress on each problem
  • Determine if the problems are caused by upstream or by the code which belongs to the SystemRescue project
  • Report issues which are caused by upstream to the upstream community to get the problem sorted
  • Raise merge requests in this git repository to fix issue caused by the code in this project
Edited by Francois Dupoux