What's the state of the Tier 3 X64 targets? Accord...

# eap

[Oliver.O]

What's the state of the Tier 3 X64 targets? According to my comments they were slated for removal in 2.4.0, but in Beta1 they are still there, though with a deprecation warning seemlingly stating that they are not:

[DEPRECATION] 'fun macosX64(): KotlinNativeTargetWithHostTests' is deprecated. Target is no longer available. See: https://kotl.in/native-targets-tiers.

See also in #testballoon.

[tapchicoma]

сс @anton.bannykh

[Artem Olkov]

Hello there.

Please consider the ticket as a source of truth: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-78660

For 2.4.0 nothing was planned for removal, everything except ios_x64 were planned for deprecation error.

Since Beta1 we have received this comment and are currently thinking about future directions. Current train of thought is to leave everything in a state of `2.3.20`(x64 targets(except ios_x64) are deprecated as warning) and wait for a change in apple publishing policies. If you have other thoughts - please do share.

[CLOVIS]

What is the recommendation for library authors? Continue publishing macosX64 & variants for now until removal, or stop publishing them now?

[Oliver.O]

I'll put the deprecated targets back in.

[Artem Olkov]

What is the recommendation for library authors?

I would say that deprecation warning is not a sign for library authors to start removing support - it's a sign for applications authors to start removing the support. Compose has removed the support to compile to native x64 because that's an experimental feature and there is no reason to continue developing an experimental feature that would be removed before an alpha state. As an example of that behaviour consider kotlinx libraries (link to coroutines, but others also has such a PR) - they are planning to keep the targets until the compiler is capable of supporting them.

That said, we do not expect library authors to provide more guarantees than the compiler - x64 targets are removed from our test cases and if those tests are troublesome on your side (for example because it's not an easy task to acquire a macos x64 machine nowadays) - we do not expect you keeping them.

I'll put the deprecated targets back in.

Thanks, much appreciated!

[Oliver.O]

Thanks for explaining the details! Makes sense. I'd just ask you to consider clarifying the deprecation comment. Like replacing

Target is no longer available.

with

Target will be removed in a future release.

[Artem Olkov]

OH, I guess we have missed that. We will fix that deprecation message, thanks 🙂