Bug#1137353: qemu dropped support for 32bit hosts but gnome-boxes depends on it

[Michael Tokarev]

On 23.05.2026 00:22, Jeremy Bícha wrote:
> On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 5:07 PM Michael Tokarev <mjt at tls.msk.ru> wrote:
>> Upstream qemu removed support for 32bit hosts entirely, including
>> even qemu-img utility (qemu-utils package is still in debian due
>> to a temporary patch).  gnome-boxes can no longer use qemu-system
>> or qemu-utils on 32bit hosts.  This includes at least 2 release
>> architectures: i386 and armhf.
>>
>> Please remove qemu from dependencies.  This dependency prevents
>> migration of qemu (and libvirt) to testing.
> 
> I could stop building gnome-boxes for 32-bit architectures (and ensure
> it's removed there) instead. What do you think?

Well, I know nothing about gnome-boxes, don't even know what it *is*
to begin with (besides the package description in debian).  I can't
decide if gnome-boxes are useful without qemu or not.  If gnome-boxes
depends on qemu in one way or another and can't function without,
maybe it's a good idea to stop building it on/for 32bit architectures.
32bit support in qemu wont go back.

If you consider dropping building gnome-boxes on 32bit architectures,
maybe it is a good idea to watch for reverse dependencies, - for
packages who depends on gnome-boxes on these architectures, too.

Thank you!

/mjt