Distributing 32bit binaries

[RenatoFerreira]

Hi, guys!

What are the reasons to keep distributing 32bit binaries? Are the people who still download 32bits applications really aware about what it means or are they just picking the first available option?

The long hours I lost dealing with errors in QT compilation made me wonder about it. What do you think?

[jefftee]

Not to point out the obvious, but 32-bit binaries are needed for anyone still running a 32-bit OS or if your application requires a library of some sort that is still 32-bit. If you don't care about those people using your program, then create/distribute 64-bit binaries only.

The only example I've run across where I needed to create a 32-bit program was for stuff I wrote that uses Lotus Notes. At the time I wrote that code, Lotus provided only 32-bit versions of their API. Perhaps that's different today, but haven't checked in quite some time. If you're windows, then XP users, or gasp prior versions of Windows are all 32-bit.

My advice, leave the 32-bit stuff in the dust and only deliver 64-bit binaries.

[ars]

I agree with jefftee. In addition, I want to ask the Qt people to also provide a mingw64 bit Qt developer package for future releases. Compiling Qt 5.4.1 on Windows for 64 bit was really a pain and waste of time (many unsuccessful attempts):
- parallel make failed with error
- were not able to compile WebKit (luckily, I don't need it so I removed it from build)

It would be really nice to get a precompiled 64 bit package for mingw. Even better, set up a suite that is capable of compiling both for 32 and 64 bit. As an example, TDM mingw64 can be switched to produce 32 or 64 bit binaries. So we would only need different namings for 32/64 bit Qt libraries. Qt tools (uic, moc, creator, ...) could still be 32 bit programs in this scenario.

Best regards
ars

[RenatoFerreira]

Compiling Qt 5.4.1 on Windows for 64 bit was really a pain and waste of time (many unsuccessful attempts)

Hi, ars... I also took a long time to get my static compilation ready. I think it's a bit buggy in windows platform as I was able to compile only when I changed the compilation directory directly to c:\ instead of using c:\User\User\Documents\bla\bla\bla. After doing that I had to wait long hours each try only to receive random errors.

[RenatoFerreira]

After doing that....

BEFORE doing that...

[RenatoFerreira]

Only to finish this topic... I found a some situations that I had to use 32 bit binaries. In one of them, for example, I was working in a customer's workstation that was running a 32 bit version of Windows 7 and I had to use the application. In addition to it, I just bought a small Windows tablet that runs Windows 10 32 bit.

So, 32 bit binaries are still needed.

The project I'm referring is this one: https://github.com/renatoferreirarenatoferreira/quickmon