KAFKA-20024: wmic os get osarchitecture is unreliable for detecting OS bitness in bat scripts

[AbyssFishRover]

Hello，During my usage of Kafka, I identified an issue. In the kafka-server-start.bat script, there is a logic that sets different startup parameters based on the bitness (32-bit/64-bit) of the operating system. The relevant code is as follows:

It first queries wmic os get osarchitecture, then determines whether the operating system is 32-bit or 64-bit by checking if the result contains the string "32-bit". However, my actual tests show that this method is not reliable—the returned results vary across Windows systems with different languages and regional settings, as shown below:

English Windows:

Chinese Windows:

French Windows:

German Windows:

Japanese Windows:

Older Windows XP systems:

Kafka has users across the globe, and the current approach lacks universality.