In Debian Sid, many packages have been changed (specially "lib" packages) recently to "64bit-time" (these packages have appended "t64" to the name)
See: https://wiki.debian.org/ReleaseGoals/64bit-time
From what I understand, that (one of the 
) reason(s) is to keep support for i386 architecture.
Not sure, though, btw, why so early ?, as it's stated that, if not making these changes, in 2038 problems may occur, but probably I don't have good insight about the motivations.
Debian Sid , BIG transition
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fredx181
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Debian Sid , BIG transition
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dimkr
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Re: Debian Sid , BIG transition
32-bit ARM is still common so some devices or appliances built with firmware based on Debian will probably keep working hardware-wise until 2038. The 2038 bug is a essentially a software kill switch that needs to be fixed to allow longer service life.
This doesn't mean that Debian won't drop i686 support. It's unpopular and many computers that can't run amd64 also have a GPU that doesn't work with Wayland, and I have one where X.Org doesn't start either.