[experiment] a 32-bit build Desktop for Windows

This issue is tracking the ability to build and test a 32-bit version of the app locally. This will mean users may be able to run Desktop on 32-bit Windows. This issue is not about shipping a 32-bit version of GitHub Desktop, as this is not planned based on the details we talked about at the time in #1214.

dugite and dugite-native now ship with a 32-bit Git package since https://github.com/desktop/dugite-native/pull/93, so this issue is tracking anything else platform-specific that blocks a 32-bit version of the app being built locally.

In particular:

• our app/.npmrc is hard-coded to x64

https://github.com/desktop/desktop/blob/3f2084e1cb88a08abc9e5cf8123ef256a59096f8/app/.npmrc#L1-L4

This affects what native modules are used when installing dependencies locally.

I haven’t used a 32-bit version of Windows in years, so I’m not the person to lead this up, but if someone wants to have a go at this I’m happy to help answer questions about what they uncover as part of this process.

[dennisameling]

@ahmelsayed Just tried your 32-bit build on Surface Pro X (this device can’t run x64 apps, only arm64 and x86 programs). Tested the following things:

• Logged in with GitHub account
• Cloned a repo
• Committed a file
• Pushed a file to GitHub

All works without any issues. This covers my basic usage scenario! Thanks! 😃

[winikisa]

helo