Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Burton, Ross]

Hi,

I'm proposing that we drop Debian 7 from the supported distributions list
in master, so that the 2.1 release supports Debian 8.  Debian 7 was
released in 2013, Debian 8 superceded it in April 2015 so will have been
out for a year when 2.1 is released, which also means that is when Debian 7
stops receiving security fixes. Nobody should be running Debian 7 after
April 2016!

Any objections?

Cheers,
Ross

Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Burton, Ross]

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Hi,

I'm proposing that we drop Debian 7 from the supported distributions list
in master, so that the 2.1 release supports Debian 8.  Debian 7 was
released in 2013, Debian 8 superceded it in April 2015 so will have been
out for a year when 2.1 is released, which also means that is when Debian 7
stops receiving security fixes. Nobody should be running Debian 7 after
April 2016!

Any objections?

Cheers,
Ross

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Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Nick Leverton]

On Thursday 11 Feb 2016 14:11:36 Burton, Ross wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm proposing that we drop Debian 7 from the supported distributions list
> in master, so that the 2.1 release supports Debian 8.  Debian 7 was
> released in 2013, Debian 8 superceded it in April 2015 so will have been
> out for a year when 2.1 is released, which also means that is when Debian 7
> stops receiving security fixes. Nobody should be running Debian 7 after
> April 2016!
> 
> Any objections?

Possibly a little early - Debian 7 will be going onto LTS security support for 
two years, starting some time this month.  Quoting from 
https://wiki.debian.org/LTS

"Debian 6 “Squeeze” until February 2016
Debian 7 “Wheezy” from February 2016 to May 2018
Debian 8 “Jessie“ from May 2018 to April/May 2020"

Nick

Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Burton, Ross]

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On 11 February 2016 at 14:21, Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org> wrote:

> Possibly a little early - Debian 7 will be going onto LTS security support
> for
> two years, starting some time this month.  Quoting from
> https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
>

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the LTS project and was looking at the security
team.

This does make it less clear, but it's still an old release and we can't
support/test on everything.

Ross

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Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Nick Leverton]

On Thursday 11 Feb 2016 14:32:50 Burton, Ross wrote:
> On 11 February 2016 at 14:21, Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org> wrote:
> > Possibly a little early - Debian 7 will be going onto LTS security support
> > for
> > two years, starting some time this month.  Quoting from
> > https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
> 
> Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the LTS project and was looking at the security
> team.
> 
> This does make it less clear, but it's still an old release and we can't
> support/test on everything.

I appreciate that, and I suspect the LTS efforts are of most interest to those
running production servers.  I would think anyone developing on Debian is 
likely to be running stable at least.  Although I've worked at many 
development companies running elderly LTS versions of Ubuntu, Fedora/Centos, 
etc, I admit I've yet to meet one that ran Debian at all.

Nevertheless if I can be of any help in supporting and testing on versions of 
Debian, I'm happy to do so.

Nick

Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Fred Ollinger]

I run debian right now and it works great.

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description:    Debian GNU/Linux 8.3 (jessie)
Release:        8.3
Codename:       jessie

I prefer debian over ubuntu:

1. Simpler footprint so it feels more customizable out of the box. (I know that any linux distro is infinitely customizable, but I like a simple install out of the box. I feel like ubuntu was ramming more and more things down my throat).

2. I strongly believe different platforms, although are more work, also expose more bugs.

3. I started on debian and it's what I'm used to.

4. It makes me feel better.

5. In the past, working on a different distro forced me to be more aware of the details of the build process which ultimately makes me a more valuable member of the team. Having the attitude that things will just work for us, in my opinion, is a bad one for a developer. I'd rather understand things.

(#4 is my primary reason).

I'll be happy to help out with debian support if you need it.

So far, I have zero problems, and it would be nice to not see a scary message telling me to change distros if my distro actually works great.

Frederick
________________________________________
From: yocto-bounces@yoctoproject.org <yocto-bounces@yoctoproject.org> on behalf of Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org>
Sent: Friday, February 12, 2016 5:43 AM
To: yocto@yoctoproject.org
Subject: Re: [yocto] Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

On Thursday 11 Feb 2016 14:32:50 Burton, Ross wrote:
> On 11 February 2016 at 14:21, Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org> wrote:
> > Possibly a little early - Debian 7 will be going onto LTS security support
> > for
> > two years, starting some time this month.  Quoting from
> > https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
>
> Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the LTS project and was looking at the security
> team.
>
> This does make it less clear, but it's still an old release and we can't
> support/test on everything.

I appreciate that, and I suspect the LTS efforts are of most interest to those
running production servers.  I would think anyone developing on Debian is
likely to be running stable at least.  Although I've worked at many
development companies running elderly LTS versions of Ubuntu, Fedora/Centos,
etc, I admit I've yet to meet one that ran Debian at all.

Nevertheless if I can be of any help in supporting and testing on versions of
Debian, I'm happy to do so.

Nick
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yocto@yoctoproject.org
https://lists.yoctoproject.org/listinfo/yocto

Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Burton, Ross]

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On 12 February 2016 at 17:14, Fred Ollinger <Fred.Ollinger@seescan.com>
wrote:

> So far, I have zero problems, and it would be nice to not see a scary
> message telling me to change distros if my distro actually works great.
>

You must have missed the bit where I said that Debian 8 was being
supported, I just wanted to drop Debian 7.

Ross

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Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Fred Ollinger]

My apologies.

________________________________
From: Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com>
Sent: Friday, February 12, 2016 9:18 AM
To: Fred Ollinger
Cc: Nick Leverton; yocto@yoctoproject.org
Subject: Re: [yocto] Dropping Debian 7 as supported?


On 12 February 2016 at 17:14, Fred Ollinger <Fred.Ollinger@seescan.com<mailto:Fred.Ollinger@seescan.com>> wrote:
So far, I have zero problems, and it would be nice to not see a scary message telling me to change distros if my distro actually works great.

You must have missed the bit where I said that Debian 8 was being supported, I just wanted to drop Debian 7.

Ross

Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Jens Rehsack]

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> Am 11.02.2016 um 15:32 schrieb Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com>:
> 
> 
> On 11 February 2016 at 14:21, Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org> wrote:
> Possibly a little early - Debian 7 will be going onto LTS security support for
> two years, starting some time this month.  Quoting from
> https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
> 
> Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the LTS project and was looking at the security team.
> 
> This does make it less clear, but it's still an old release and we can't support/test on everything.

Sure, but are there some serious/expensive maintaining efforts continuing support Debian 7?
Or is it an approach to kick Debian from list of supported distributions for (above?) reasons?

Since I run some build instances on a Debian 7 machine which is not going to be upgraded that
soon (don't want Debian 8, but don't want to reinstall from scratch and migrate my Xen VM's ...),
dropping support for "it's just time to move on" is more a Desktop philosophy, not for embedded/datacenter
approaches ...

Cheers
--
Jens Rehsack - rehsack@gmail.com


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Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Richard Purdie]

On Sat, 2016-02-13 at 15:30 +0100, Jens Rehsack wrote:
> > Am 11.02.2016 um 15:32 schrieb Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com>
> > :
> > 
> > 
> > On 11 February 2016 at 14:21, Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org>
> > wrote:
> > Possibly a little early - Debian 7 will be going onto LTS security
> > support for
> > two years, starting some time this month.  Quoting from
> > https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
> > 
> > Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the LTS project and was looking at the
> > security team.
> > 
> > This does make it less clear, but it's still an old release and we
> > can't support/test on everything.
> 
> Sure, but are there some serious/expensive maintaining efforts
> continuing support Debian 7?
> Or is it an approach to kick Debian from list of supported
> distributions for (above?) reasons?
> 
> Since I run some build instances on a Debian 7 machine which is not
> going to be upgraded that
> soon (don't want Debian 8, but don't want to reinstall from scratch
> and migrate my Xen VM's ...),
> dropping support for "it's just time to move on" is more a Desktop
> philosophy, not for embedded/datacenter
> approaches ...

For example, we'd like to use the sparse option when building rootfs:

https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9099

This support isn't available in the version of dd in debian 7. Our
options are:

* Build a dd -native
* Check the version of dd and error if too old
* Don't bother with sparse support

We're seeing a few issues like this with debian 7 and the general
feeling is we're better off concentrating on newer distros. We simply
don't have the time/resources to fix/support things like "dd-native" or
more paths through the sanity code.

This doesn't mean you won't be able to make debian 7 work with
something like the buildtools tarball or through other means, it does
mean we're not going to make sure it works out the box though.

So no, its not just "its time to move on".

Cheers,

Richard

Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Khem Raj]

On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 9:28 AM, Richard Purdie
<richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 2016-02-13 at 15:30 +0100, Jens Rehsack wrote:
>> > Am 11.02.2016 um 15:32 schrieb Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com>
>> > :
>> >
>> >
>> > On 11 February 2016 at 14:21, Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org>
>> > wrote:
>> > Possibly a little early - Debian 7 will be going onto LTS security
>> > support for
>> > two years, starting some time this month.  Quoting from
>> > https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
>> >
>> > Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the LTS project and was looking at the
>> > security team.
>> >
>> > This does make it less clear, but it's still an old release and we
>> > can't support/test on everything.
>>
>> Sure, but are there some serious/expensive maintaining efforts
>> continuing support Debian 7?
>> Or is it an approach to kick Debian from list of supported
>> distributions for (above?) reasons?
>>
>> Since I run some build instances on a Debian 7 machine which is not
>> going to be upgraded that
>> soon (don't want Debian 8, but don't want to reinstall from scratch
>> and migrate my Xen VM's ...),
>> dropping support for "it's just time to move on" is more a Desktop
>> philosophy, not for embedded/datacenter
>> approaches ...
>
> For example, we'd like to use the sparse option when building rootfs:
>
> https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9099
>
> This support isn't available in the version of dd in debian 7. Our
> options are:
>
> * Build a dd -native

For core feature like sparse files its better to control our own destiny
and use dd-native regardless. But that does not mean we should
not drop debian7 or arcane centos distros that we keep supporting for
ever. I still see patches for centos 5.8 in metadata.

Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Richard Purdie]

On Sat, 2016-02-13 at 10:12 -0800, Khem Raj wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 9:28 AM, Richard Purdie
> <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2016-02-13 at 15:30 +0100, Jens Rehsack wrote:
> > > > Am 11.02.2016 um 15:32 schrieb Burton, Ross <
> > > > ross.burton@intel.com>
> > > > :
> > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > On 11 February 2016 at 14:21, Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org>
> > > > wrote:
> > > > Possibly a little early - Debian 7 will be going onto LTS
> > > > security
> > > > support for
> > > > two years, starting some time this month.  Quoting from
> > > > https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
> > > > 
> > > > Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the LTS project and was looking at
> > > > the
> > > > security team.
> > > > 
> > > > This does make it less clear, but it's still an old release and
> > > > we
> > > > can't support/test on everything.
> > > 
> > > Sure, but are there some serious/expensive maintaining efforts
> > > continuing support Debian 7?
> > > Or is it an approach to kick Debian from list of supported
> > > distributions for (above?) reasons?
> > > 
> > > Since I run some build instances on a Debian 7 machine which is
> > > not
> > > going to be upgraded that
> > > soon (don't want Debian 8, but don't want to reinstall from
> > > scratch
> > > and migrate my Xen VM's ...),
> > > dropping support for "it's just time to move on" is more a
> > > Desktop
> > > philosophy, not for embedded/datacenter
> > > approaches ...
> > 
> > For example, we'd like to use the sparse option when building
> > rootfs:
> > 
> > https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9099
> > 
> > This support isn't available in the version of dd in debian 7. Our
> > options are:
> > 
> > * Build a dd -native
> 
> For core feature like sparse files its better to control our own 
> destiny and use dd-native regardless.

There are certain core utilities which its very hard to add into the
dependency chains correctly. With xz, I recently gave up trying to get
the patches right. I'm sure it could be done, it didn't seem worth the
effort though. dd and other coreutils fall into the same category, very
hard to get right without races. There is probably a redesign of the
some of the way staging happens needed to make it work and that is a
low priority right now.

>  But that does not mean we should
> not drop debian7 or arcane centos distros that we keep supporting for
> ever. I still see patches for centos 5.8 in metadata.

We did retire centos 6 recently (qemu wouldn't run there correctly for
any of the automated tests).

Cheers,

Richard

Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Khem Raj]

On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 2:24 AM, Richard Purdie
<richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 2016-02-13 at 10:12 -0800, Khem Raj wrote:
>> On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 9:28 AM, Richard Purdie
>> <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>> > On Sat, 2016-02-13 at 15:30 +0100, Jens Rehsack wrote:
>> > > > Am 11.02.2016 um 15:32 schrieb Burton, Ross <
>> > > > ross.burton@intel.com>
>> > > > :
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> > > > On 11 February 2016 at 14:21, Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org>
>> > > > wrote:
>> > > > Possibly a little early - Debian 7 will be going onto LTS
>> > > > security
>> > > > support for
>> > > > two years, starting some time this month.  Quoting from
>> > > > https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
>> > > >
>> > > > Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the LTS project and was looking at
>> > > > the
>> > > > security team.
>> > > >
>> > > > This does make it less clear, but it's still an old release and
>> > > > we
>> > > > can't support/test on everything.
>> > >
>> > > Sure, but are there some serious/expensive maintaining efforts
>> > > continuing support Debian 7?
>> > > Or is it an approach to kick Debian from list of supported
>> > > distributions for (above?) reasons?
>> > >
>> > > Since I run some build instances on a Debian 7 machine which is
>> > > not
>> > > going to be upgraded that
>> > > soon (don't want Debian 8, but don't want to reinstall from
>> > > scratch
>> > > and migrate my Xen VM's ...),
>> > > dropping support for "it's just time to move on" is more a
>> > > Desktop
>> > > philosophy, not for embedded/datacenter
>> > > approaches ...
>> >
>> > For example, we'd like to use the sparse option when building
>> > rootfs:
>> >
>> > https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9099
>> >
>> > This support isn't available in the version of dd in debian 7. Our
>> > options are:
>> >
>> > * Build a dd -native
>>
>> For core feature like sparse files its better to control our own
>> destiny and use dd-native regardless.
>
> There are certain core utilities which its very hard to add into the
> dependency chains correctly. With xz, I recently gave up trying to get
> the patches right. I'm sure it could be done, it didn't seem worth the
> effort though. dd and other coreutils fall into the same category, very
> hard to get right without races. There is probably a redesign of the
> some of the way staging happens needed to make it work and that is a
> low priority right now.
>
>>  But that does not mean we should
>> not drop debian7 or arcane centos distros that we keep supporting for
>> ever. I still see patches for centos 5.8 in metadata.
>
> We did retire centos 6 recently (qemu wouldn't run there correctly for
> any of the automated tests).

ver good. we can remove

fix_for_centos_5.8.patch from glibc
meta/recipes-devtools/apt/apt/0001-fix-the-gcc-version-check.patch
meta/recipes-devtools/apt/apt/0001-remove-Wsuggest-attribute-from-CFLAGS.patch

>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>

Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Jens Rehsack]

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> Am 14.02.2016 um 11:24 schrieb Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>:
> 
> On Sat, 2016-02-13 at 10:12 -0800, Khem Raj wrote:
>> On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 9:28 AM, Richard Purdie
>> <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>> On Sat, 2016-02-13 at 15:30 +0100, Jens Rehsack wrote:
>>>>> Am 11.02.2016 um 15:32 schrieb Burton, Ross <
>>>>> ross.burton@intel.com>
>>>>> :
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On 11 February 2016 at 14:21, Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Possibly a little early - Debian 7 will be going onto LTS
>>>>> security
>>>>> support for
>>>>> two years, starting some time this month.  Quoting from
>>>>> https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
>>>>> 
>>>>> Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the LTS project and was looking at
>>>>> the
>>>>> security team.
>>>>> 
>>>>> This does make it less clear, but it's still an old release and
>>>>> we
>>>>> can't support/test on everything.
>>>> 
>>>> Sure, but are there some serious/expensive maintaining efforts
>>>> continuing support Debian 7?
>>>> Or is it an approach to kick Debian from list of supported
>>>> distributions for (above?) reasons?
>>>> 
>>>> Since I run some build instances on a Debian 7 machine which is
>>>> not
>>>> going to be upgraded that
>>>> soon (don't want Debian 8, but don't want to reinstall from
>>>> scratch
>>>> and migrate my Xen VM's ...),
>>>> dropping support for "it's just time to move on" is more a
>>>> Desktop
>>>> philosophy, not for embedded/datacenter
>>>> approaches ...
>>> 
>>> For example, we'd like to use the sparse option when building
>>> rootfs:
>>> 
>>> https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9099
>>> 
>>> This support isn't available in the version of dd in debian 7. Our
>>> options are:
>>> 
>>> * Build a dd -native

That's something complete different than "End of regular support, switching
to LTS" - so based on missing features, any distribution which doesn't
fulfill the required features should be discarded from list of supported
distributions unless the required features are Yocto patches in upstream.
In such a case the drop smells like misusing power (then a smoother way
should be found),

>> For core feature like sparse files its better to control our own
>> destiny and use dd-native regardless.
> 
> There are certain core utilities which its very hard to add into the
> dependency chains correctly. With xz, I recently gave up trying to get
> the patches right. I'm sure it could be done, it didn't seem worth the
> effort though. dd and other coreutils fall into the same category, very
> hard to get right without races. There is probably a redesign of the
> some of the way staging happens needed to make it work and that is a
> low priority right now.

Having an implicit xy.bbclass adding dependency to yocto-coreutils-native
isn't a way? As said several times, my pkgsrc background leads me to
Yocto for embedded Linux development - and this background educated add
nb* utilities for each host utility which is incompatible to the
infrastructure.

>> But that does not mean we should
>> not drop debian7 or arcane centos distros that we keep supporting for
>> ever. I still see patches for centos 5.8 in metadata.
> 
> We did retire centos 6 recently (qemu wouldn't run there correctly for
> any of the automated tests).

Which is again a good reason for retiring support for a dedicated
distribution. I'm a bit torn regarding the lifecycle of RHEL/Cent OS,
which is 10 years after release - dropping support for enterprise
grade distribution to quick leaves a taste/smell ... (don't know how to
express).

Don't get me wrong - it is absolutely reasonable to retire distributions
lacking important features which can't be added with reasonable effort
into build chain. Deciding which important feature requires such a
retirement should be proved with an eye of lifecycle of server distributions.

Cheers
--
Jens Rehsack - rehsack@gmail.com


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Re: Dropping Debian 7 as supported?

[Nick Leverton]

On Thursday 11 Feb 2016 14:32:50 Burton, Ross wrote:
> On 11 February 2016 at 14:21, Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org> wrote:
> > Possibly a little early - Debian 7 will be going onto LTS security support
> > for
> > two years, starting some time this month.  Quoting from
> > https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
> 
> Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the LTS project and was looking at the security
> team.
> 
> This does make it less clear, but it's still an old release and we can't
> support/test on everything.

I agree it appears old by the standards of fast moving bleeding edge distros.  
But despite what I said last week it's not really that ancient. Debian 7 is 
still an officially supported version, and as an LTS version you're perhaps now 
more likely to find your own users still on it.

The LTS announcement was made just this weekend, by the way:

"There will be no further security support for Debian 6.0.

The LTS Team will prepare the transition to Debian 7 ("wheezy"), which
is the current oldstable release. The LTS team will take over support
from the Security Team on April 26, 2016.

Debian 7 will also receive Long Term Support for five years after its
initial release with support ending in May 2018"

I can't say what Yocto ought to do, but if it were possible to make the sparse 
support into an option, would that be a compromise ?   The patch linked from 
#9099 suggests that only two places would need to use that option.

Nick