Nextcloud Desktop Client 32-bit (Windows)

Update (2019-08-09):

2019-08-09: Happy to announce that Nextcloud is now using my build scripts (see below) to build releases with 32-bit and 64-bit support on Windows, starting with v2.5.3 🙂

Link to release 2.5.3: https://download.nextcloud.com/desktop/releases/Windows/Nextcloud-2.5.3-setup.exe

And I’m also really happy to announce that I joined the Desktop Client engineering team at Nextcloud just a few days ago 🙂

2019-06-04: I just published my re-work of the client building scripts. Use it if you prefer to build your own version: https://github.com/misch7/nextcloud-client-building

Original post (2019-05-04):

Short story: Due to the lack of 32-bit support of a modern sync client for Windows I decided to go my own way and build one from the Nextcloud Git repo on Github.

Download:

Download link: Desktop Sync Client 2.5.2.1 for 32-bit Windows

Built: 2019-05-04, Checksums:

• MD5: a41d6e7ff9a4535ac28664fdc0d6ca61
• SHA-1: b4aa888d24b4beeb038062fc092ce0a6ce825196
• SHA-256: 81e6667b9b2f6c6fb92fe4d1f3dfc1e3a4ce7cde77609ce5af8e426e3b54d0f9

Notes:

Sources are unmodified, everything comes from the stable-2.5.2 branch.

Tested with version 15.0.5 of the Nextcloud Server. Also includes recent OpenSSL v1.0.2r (and libcrypto 1.1.1b) libraries.

Important: I changed the updater URL to point to my server for two reasons: 1. to avoid a new 64-bit-only release of Nextcloud to be installed over your 32-bit client and 2. to able to build and release new 32-bit clients in the future.

I heavily tested the sync client on a Windows 10 32-bit Tablet PC but cannot guarantee it’s working for you. Your feedback is more than welcome!

New releases will be announced here and I will share my build instructions soon here as I have them ready.

There’s an ongoing discussion of this topic on GitHub: https://github.com/nextcloud/desktop/issues/840

Background:

Finally a reason to spin up my own blog!^^

Shortly after the Desktop Sync Client 2.5.2 release in March I was searching for an updated client with 32-bit support for Windows.

During a computer lesson I gave to my weekly “computer-geek club of elderly tech enthusiasts” we quickly figured out that installing the new client on Windows x86 Tablet PC’s wasn’t very satisfying.

As my examination of the setup package quickly revealed: The installer was 32-bit but the containing Nextcloud sync client and all its libraries were only 64-bit.

Even though I appreciate the switch to 64-bit (most companies took their time…) in my opinion it’s not a good idea for such a commonly used piece of software to abandon legacy support. I mean legacy here in terms of “nearly everybody has some Windows 32-bit Tablet-or-so with 64-bit capable CPU but 32-bit Windows installed”-style^^

The first approach was to use the last 32-bit version available: 2.3 from 2017. Sadly that was no viable solution. Each time a sync was complete the whole procedure started over and over again. The server had more traffic than ever but even more worse: The old client drained the battery (and perhaps transfer volume) of the Windows Tablets.

On the web: No statement, no comment, just people looking for 32-bit support – like me. So I decided to take my experience as a software developer and my recent knowledge of porting between Windows <-> Mac <-> Linux to try to port the current client version to Win32.

The result of the experiment is the software package you may download freely on top of this site. I’d like to share this as a way to give back to the Open Source community and culture.

I hope it works for you and would really appreciate your feedback.