BLD: remove support for 32 bit

[jreback]

seems microsoft has removed support starting 3.10 (as is numpy)

we should do the same

[thesamesam]

Apologies if I'm misunderstanding here, but it looks like Numpy isn't dropping 32-bit support entirely. It looks like they're only dropping wheel generation because of infra constraints but will continue to test.

I'm interested because in Gentoo, we still support a number of 32-bit architectures (arm, x86 being the two main ones), and Pandas ends up in the depgraph often unavoidably if we want to run test suites on programs.

Is the plan for Pandas to drop support entirely for 32-bit or to just stop producing wheels?

[jreback]

why should we support 32 bit at all?

this is just more work - sure it's probably easy but we are all volunteer

[mgorny]

Does being a volunteer justify removing work already done by (other) volunteers?

[jorisvandenbossche]

To be clear, @jreback only did a proposal to remove them, nothing has been decided yet, and your feedback on this idea is welcome.

Since numpy is not removing them, and if we also switch to cibuildwheel (cfr #44027, assuming this makes it easier to keep 32bit wheels), I personally think we can follow numpy on this.

[mgorny]

For the record, I don't have a problem with removing 32-bit wheels or 32-bit testing, if that is cumbersome. However, what I would like to avoid is removing the code to support 32-bit setups, or rejecting patches that fix them.

[jreback]

For the record, I don't have a problem with removing 32-bit wheels or 32-bit testing, if that is cumbersome. However, what I would like to avoid is removing the code to support 32-bit setups, or rejecting patches that fix them.

@mgorny these would always be welcome

it's the testing / support that can be cumbersome (it's not so burdensome more that if others are dropping support then we should as well; note that numpy is usually the last to drop support for things)

[jbrockmendel]

i agree with @jorisvandenbossche, following numpy's lead on this seems reasonable

xref https://discuss.python.org/t/dropping-32-bit-packages/5476

[lithomas1]

At the very least, I'd like to stop making 32-bit wheels by 2.0.
Note that this issue of dropping 32 bit has already come up before. xref #15889

[fangchenli]

+1

[lithomas1]

FYI, we are dropping Linux 32 bit builds after numpy 1.22 comes out, where they also will be dropping 32 bit Linux builds. Windows 32 bit will not be affected, and we will still test/support 32 bit.