Re: [PATCH] ci: bump debian-11 job to debian-12

[Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im>]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2026 at 10:19:33PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 07, 2026 at 08:03:34AM +0200, Patrick Steinhardt wrote:
> 
> > > +      # Supported until 2028-06-30.
> > > +      - jobname: debian-12
> > > +        image: debian:12
> > >    artifacts:
> > >      paths:
> > >        - t/failed-test-artifacts
> > 
> > The changes look good, but I wonder whether we want to swap to the
> > "oldstable" tag instead. That points to debian-12, too, and might result
> > in less churn going forward.
> 
> I was all ready to agree and propose a patch, but I think it might be
> more complicated. The "old" flags flip when a new stable version is
> released, but what we really care about is things leaving LTS. And the
> two are not really aligned.
> 
> So if we wanted the oldest supported Debian release, that would have
> been "oldoldstable" (debian-11) until August 31st of this year. But
> after that, we want "oldstable" (debian-12), which is now the oldest
> thing under LTS. And that will be true until probably next summer, when
> debian-14 is released, at which point we'd want to stay on it by
> switching to "oldoldstable" again for another year.
> 
> The offset comes from the fact that Debian releases approximately every
> 2 years, but with a 5-year LTS, and they never align.
> 
> If we track oldstable, then every other year we're not using the oldest
> supported release (because the prior release is still in LTS). Or we
> track oldoldstable, which means every other year we're using a release
> that's no longer supported. Or we flip-flop between them once a year,
> when oldoldstable goes out of support.
> 
> Which makes me inclined to just keep the current scheme: use the numeric
> codes and just bump them every 2 years or so when they go out of
> support. And we can even put it off until the out-of-support release
> starts causing problems like it did here.

Sounds good, let's stick with the current patch then. Thanks!

Patrick